By Stephen Ryan – Publisher of Mystic Post

MY PERSONAL JOURNEY

For me, Medjugorje was an answer to a very long prayer.  

Stephen Ryan

I did not know it at the time but Medjugorje was the destination I had been searching for from the moment a miracle took place at a hospital in Alexandria, Va. – a miracle that saved my son’s life.

My son is alive and well, but only through the true intervention of a miracle and a desperate prayer to Jesus Christ over twenty years ago.

My son was born two and a half months premature. He was born the day before our first “Lamaze” class.  My son was given his last rites the night he was born, but he fought hard that night and made it through to the next morning. He was not breathing on his own – oxygen was pumped into his tiny body by machines – and the incredible staff worked tirelessly around the clock trying to save his life. My son’s vital signs were like a roller coaster – a few hours of improvement were followed by crashes, manic activity, and tears.

My father was a well-known pediatrician in town, and he stopped by the neonatal intensive care unit every chance he got to check on his grandson’s progress. About four days into the fight for my son’s life, my father, doing rounds at the hospital, came by in the afternoon to lend his support and expertise. As we talked quietly about the previous night, a swarm of nurses and the head neonatologist surrounded my son’s ventilation unit – the little cocoon that was keeping him alive.

My father sensed something was very wrong and walked over to the swarm to investigate.  I could not bear to watch.  Before my son’s birth I was not very religious.    I did not go to church regularly, if at all – I did pull out the bible from time to time and read the Gospels to try and discern what the fuss was all about – that was about it. But like the saying goes – “there are no atheists in foxholes” – from the moment the doctors told me my son was very sick, I found myself in a foxhole, and I turned to prayer as my firstborn fought for his life.

I finally looked towards the group surrounding my son and I noticed my father locked in an intense conversation with the medical team and then I saw him shake his head. He stepped away from the group and then walked towards me with tears in his eyes – the look on his face made my stomach collapse. I thought, no, it can’t be; not now. My son had fought too hard, but my father’s look said it all – it was over.  I turned away from my father and stared at the walls. And then I prayed in a way I had never prayed in my life.  I prayed directly to Jesus and I asked him, right then, for a miracle – I asked him to save my son’s life with all my heart and all that I had left in my soul. It is at this point of my story where it really does not matter what other people think or believe.   

I know what happened. I felt what happened.  What happened next was tangible and real. At that moment, the moment my son had basically stopped living, I understood that miracles do occur because right then I felt a warmth come through me and over me, then a rush of something powerful and tangible entered the room. The best way for me to describe “rush” is that it reminded me of the Pentecost- It reminded of the rush of wind that met the Blessed Mother and the apostles in the upstairs room as the Holy Spirit descended upon them.  I had never felt anything like that in my life. One thing is certain and  that I knew it was something real.

As the warmth faded and my attentions returned back to the sad realities, my father walked back towards my son’s ventilation unit.  More activity – I could sense hope – I could sense, suddenly, the fight was back on – oxygen was returning to my son’s brain. His vital signs returned from a place that everybody in that room knew you could not come back from. My son was going to live a little longer. And indeed my son did live a little longer. He is now six feet tall and strong as an ox. 

As I was driving home on the night of the miracle, I thought about the warmth I felt in the hospital as my son was dying.  I thought about my prayer and how it was followed by the real presence of God and Jesus Christ.

That night I pulled out the Bible, and I searched for the words “Seek and you shall find, ask and you shall receive.”  I had “asked” for something big that afternoon and I received more than any man deserved. And so it was that night I made a promise to seek Him – to find the path God wants us to follow.

But like many promises, sometimes they take a little longer to keep than planned. After my son came home from the hospital and as his health began to improve, my wife and I were anxious to bring normalcy back into our days. Soon responsibilities of jobs, social obligations, and kid play days, set the agenda. My need, it seemed, for spiritual nourishment had diminished with the demands of life.  Though I never forgot the miraculous episode, and I would think about it often, the dominance of secular culture began to rule.

New house, new car, expensive vacations, the race was on to live a life that the world promised me would deliver peace and happiness.   After awhile I settled into the life of a relatively happy agnostic. Now and then I would contemplate spirituality. I would pick up the bible and skim through the gospels only reading the words of Jesus – I dismissed the rest – the Bible, outside of the words of Jesus, always seemed to take me back to institutionalized religion, a place that did not offer the peace my heart was unconsciously looking for.  I was looking for miracles and uplifting words, not rules and demands. My search for spiritual meaning in my life never really disappeared – it just sort of simmered on a stove top burner for a long time.

As my kids got older and more independent, I began to meet with a close group of friends, Washington D.C. lawyers, mostly, and we would gather regularly for beer, French fries, and lots of talk.  We would talk politics, sports, sailboat racing, and sometimes religion. One of my friends is a Palestinian American who went to the University of Virginia and got his law degree at The College of William & Mary.   He was our designated spiritual advisor.