Prospecting

In the summer of 1858, Richmond Hudson left his wife and children in Illinois and traveled to California to strike it rich so he could find the money that would allow him to start over. He left without disclosing his plans to his fifteen-year-old son, Thomas, my great-grandfather. One morning, he awoke, and his father was gone. The father wouldn’t return to the son for three years. When Richmond did come home, he was as broke as he was when he left.

Several times in the recent past I bought lottery tickets with the hope of striking it rich. After each successive drawing, I take my ticket and throw it away. For a few days, I live in the realism that I will never win, but then the jackpots increase, and I yield to the absurd hallucination that nothing is impossible except the impossible. Of course, I buy another ticket or two.

Like Richmond, I am motivated only by hope in the pursuit of millions of dollars; for a little while, it is the ride of a lifetime. Hope is the feeling of expectancy that something is going to take place. From the moment hope is born to the moment it is either realized or dashed, hope is a wonderful feeling. From moment to moment, hope builds, blocking out fear and doubt. It is a mild ecstasy, tranquilizing all the ordinary around us while infusing us with the confidence to await the extraordinary.

I’ve known these episodes of unbelievable hopefulness in this journey with my son. Only a few weeks after his brain injury, I Googled every nation on earth for websites of churches and Christian organizations to which I could send urgent prayer requests. I collected 900 email addresses covering 110 countries and sent out the plea. I heard back from a handful of pastors from all over the world. One pastor in East Africa wrote that his entire congregation intended to fast for a week for Matt’s healing.

I remember how different it might be for Matt if we lived in Africa where miracles seemed to be an everyday event. I even prayed that God would find a way to get him there if that were the only way to heal his brain. Months later, a friend invited me to his home to hear the testimony of a Christian missionary who had just returned from overseas. I was amazed as I learned about the miracles he’d witnessed at a megachurch in Kenya. The blind and deaf were healed, the lame walked, and even a man was raised to life at his funeral.

Two months later, a friend called to tell me a preacher from Kenya was coming to her church for a one-night service. The preacher was from the same church the missionary had visited. The Sunday evening service lasted four hours, divided evenly between worship and preaching. The preacher held a handkerchief the entire time he spoke; when the service ended, he gave it to me. He told me to place the cloth on Matt’s head and, in faith, ask God for a miracle. I did, but it didn’t happen.

A former co-worker told me the Holy Spirit had given her emphatic instructions to pray for specific parts of Matt’s brain. This from a woman of faith cherished so much by God that an angel appeared to her shortly before her husband died.

One night, a dear Pentecostal saint called to tell me the Holy Spirit had come upon her most powerfully. She had prayed fervently for Matt for thirty minutes without stopping. She was convinced something spectacular was going to happen.

Coming out of Matt’s bedroom one day, a Scripture verse instantaneously popped into my head. The verse said that God would bring my son back to me. Six months later, I watched Sid Roth’s It’s Supernatural webcast featuring an evangelist (Bob) who described his heavenly visitation in the following words: And I was walking through the stages of the Tabernacle and as I got closer to the Holy of Holies there was this lampstand. Zachariah says it’s the lampstand of Heaven. Isaiah said it’s the sevenfold spirit of God. And so, there was this being there. I believe it was an angel. It didn’t have a face, that handed me these seven vials of oil and said 'This is the anointing oil of the sevenfold spirit of God, the fullness of the Spirit, and as a result, you’re going to see brain injuries healed. The way I poured anointing oil over you when you were ordained you’re going to anoint people with the Spirit of God and you’re going to see brain injuries healed.'

I looked into the evangelist’s ministry and learned he would preach at a local Assembly of God church in June of the following year. I could hardly believe what I was reading. God seemingly had promised me he was going to bring Matt back. Here, a few miles away, would be a faith healer who had gone to heaven and received a specific anointing to pray for those suffering from brain injuries.

Meanwhile, a friend called to tell me he had the most unusual dream about Matt. In the dream, he was working on his computer at his desk in his basement. He turned around. On a park bench behind him were two figures: Matt’s physical body and his spiritual body. Matt was crying. Nearby was a lake. Matt’s physical body got up and dove into the water. He began to drown. Then Matt’s spiritual body jumped into the water after him. Matt’s spirit re-entered his body. He was whole once again. Matt came up out of the water healed with a big smile.

A few months later, the big day arrived when my wife and I loaded Matt into our handicapped van and drove him to the local church for what I knew would be a miraculous encounter with this heaven-sent faith healer. When we arrived, I noticed a large pond in front of the building. Water!  I parked the van under the overhang and saw a patio-style two-seater outside my door. Park bench! My hope meter was in the red zone now. I was convinced that what I saw confirmed my friend’s dream months before. I had no doubt whatsoever that my son was about to be healed.

Inside, the service continued well past its scheduled end time. We waited patiently in the back, keeping Matt warm under several blankets to protect him from the air conditioning set to counter a warm June afternoon. Eventually, the service ended, and we got the signal from our contact to wheel Matt to where the guest prophet mingled with others. Finally, Bob made his way to us. The only thing I said to him was that Matt had a brain injury twelve years before. He asked How far did you travel to get here? I told him we lived twenty minutes away. He prayed for Matt for maybe 60 seconds, then turned his attention to the small crowd lingering around him.

No sooner had his prayer started than he was finished. The miracle never came. I can’t adequately describe the depth of my anger and disappointment. Driving home, I couldn’t stop thinking about his question to me. Why did he ask how far we’d traveled? Would he have felt bad if we’d traveled across the country and nothing happened to Matt? Would he have felt OK if we lived next door and nothing happened? I surmised he wanted some assurance that if there was no miracle, then the family wasn’t out much for their effort on behalf of their son.

I wondered why, when he saw that Matt had a brain injury, he didn’t immediately tell us he had gone to heaven and received a supernatural commission to pray for people just like him. Why wouldn’t he want to confirm his anointing by eagerly telling us we’d come to the right place and the right person for a miracle? Yet, a profoundly disabled young man was right in front of him, but he offered a prayer that I could have extracted from anyone off the street.

It all added up to a sham in my mind. I let my resentment simmer for four years before I wrote Bob and told him I thought he was a fraud. By then, he’d made a name for himself and had written several books. He traveled to churches and conferences around the country to bring words of knowledge and healing to the hopeful. He never responded to my letter. I’m sure he’s long forgotten about Matt, but I will live forever with the most disillusionment I’ve ever experienced.

I’ve felt that disillusionment over and over again. I felt it when a local faith healer with an overseas reputation for healing the sick and raising the dead came to pray for Matt. His prayer was polite but brief. Then there was the faith healer from Texas who was in town for a weekend seminar on supernatural ministry. He prayed for 90 minutes at Matt’s bedside. He was a sincere man but without anything supernatural at that moment. Then there was the anointed handkerchief sent from a healing ministry in Seattle with instructions to place it on Matt’s head—an earnest but ineffectual act. Then there was the woman who came and walked around our house seven times carrying a gallon of holy water and splashing it out to drive away demonic forces preventing Matt’s recovery. He did not recover.

The world-famous faith healer T. L. Osborn came to Des Moines for a crusade and on a fluke, I talked with him in the green room section of the convention center. I told him about Matt and asked if he could take a fifteen-minute drive from downtown Des Moines to pray for him. He said his schedule wouldn’t permit the trip, but he would gladly send me some books and tapes on divine healing that might help. They didn’t. If I were given the opportunity to ask any other big-league spiritualists to pray for Matt, they wouldn’t have mattered. Shamans of faith often promise the unimaginable and produce the intangible. The ministry gifts of miracles and healing don’t come with any performance assurance, unlike my push mower, which is guaranteed to start on the first pull.

And then, just a few days ago, I had a dream so unusual that I knew it had to have a spiritual undertone. I looked online to see if I could find a Christian website that offered dream interpretation, and lo and behold, I stumbled upon one that offered the chance to get feedback from a live person. As I wandered around the website, I saw the whole enterprise was built upon an enthusiastic faith healer with a reputation for the miraculous. He even featured testimonials from people who had risen from the dead by his hand. Furthermore, he had a service in his church every Thursday night called Miracles for the Maimed. All I needed to do was submit a picture of Matthew and get in line. I’m still waiting.

Empty-handed is the term used to describe Richmond’s homecoming after prospecting for gold in California. It’s the word that labels my attachment to the irresistible turn-on of throwing money away with the lottery. And after nearly twenty years of hoping beyond hope for a miracle, it’s a good, honest description of hopelessness without resorting to the more disagreeable word defeated.

Why didn’t Richmond end his quest for riches after a few months of dismal results? Why do I continue to spend money on the lottery when it would be easier to sit in my backyard and light the cash on fire? Why do I still seek out so-called miracle workers when I know nothing will change?

All of the hope from these faith encounters was worth the thrill even while I knew deep within my soul that it would all vaporize, leaving a residue of disappointment that would linger forever. For a short time, I could live in the realm of fantastic possibility where doubt and fear aren’t in the backseat. For a few nanoseconds, they aren’t even in the car!

It took three years before reality hit Richmond in the face, and he gave up. It’s been six times that long since I started prospecting hope despite that same kind of reality staring right back at me. I have refused to listen to it, to look at it, all in the determination that I’m that much closer to the motherlode with each passing day.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast. That’s my truth until I take my last breath, or until Matt takes his. For those around me in my minuscule world, the notion is ridiculous. The unspoken suggestion is Open your eyes - don’t play the fool when it’s obvious God has said ‘Move on.’  Richmond moved on to come back to his family, but I can’t. I’m not letting go of my pickaxe just yet. Who knows that with one more swing, my precious son will look at me and say Dad, you did it!