Prayer Changes Things: What Our Lady of Lourdes Has Done in Our Lives, by Christy Wilkens
In 2017, my husband and I took our son to Lourdes, on a Hail Mary attempt (pun intended) to cure his incurable genetic disease.
Reader, he was not cured of his incurable genetic disease.
In all honesty, I undertook that pilgrimage out of spite and bitterness. My heart was hardened, almost (but not quite) irreparably. I had prayed and adored and beseeched and wept and begged already for a full year, in my ineffective attempts to make peace with the truth of how God had knit my son together in my womb. I wasn’t praying for peace, or for acceptance of God’s will—I was praying for a miracle.
When we entered the baths together, broken, and we exited the baths unchanged, I thought, “That’s it. I’m done.”
The Lord, and Our Lady of Lourdes, were far from done with us.
I have written thousands of words and given dozens of talks about the miraculous changes we experienced after our time in the Lourdes baths. In fact, I wrote an entire book about it. Five years after my book Awakening at Lourdes: How An Unanswered Prayer Healed Our Family And Restored Our Faith was published, I continue to see the roots of that pilgrimage growing deeper and stronger in our family’s life, its branches continuing to bear rich, heavy fruit.
The miracles began arraying themselves at our feet before we even left Lourdes. Oscar showed marked improvement in his alertness. By the time we got home, he was showing physical improvement that even his therapists and doctors could not explain. While he was not fully healed, his healing was profound and real.
By the time we returned home, my own faith had been rebuilt—no, not rebuilt. Unveiled as something completely new and whole again. In four days, my experience in Lourdes brought me from Psalm 10:1, “Why, Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” to Psalm 126:3, “The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.”
Today, I’ll share another piece of our Lourdes story that is less well-known: I heard a call on that same 2017 pilgrimage to become a nurse. After Jonah-ing my way out of it for a few years (How about we go to Nineveh instead, Lord?), I eventually returned to college in my mid-forties; in 2023, I graduated with a BSN and obtained my nursing license. My husband and I now return to Lourdes every year—sometimes one of us or the other, occasionally both—to serve the malades, or sick pilgrims. We attempt to repay the gift that was gratuitously lavished upon us, to love as we had been loved, to be the hands and feet of Christ, gazing upon the face of our beloved Jesus in the sick and the poor who bear His image.
I am a registered nurse with the Lourdes International Medical Bureau.
We have brought our children, Oscar’s siblings, with us as volunteers, almost every one. (The last one gets her chance this coming May.)
Todd and I have become members of the Order of Malta, the lay religious organization that sponsored our trip and arranges that same large, international pilgrimage involving thousands of people every year in May.
He and I also run the Order of Malta Association that is based in Central Texas, helping to carry out its twin charisms of defense of the faith and service to the poor and the sick to our local population, between pilgrimages.
The prayer I took to Lourdes was, “Lord, heal our son.” Prayer changes things. But prayer does not force God to obey our every whim and command.
Prayer changes us. Prayer transforms our lives. Prayer allows God the permission and space to surprise us, through Mary’s intercession on our behalf. Our Heavenly Father and our loving Mother know best what their children need.
What I needed wasn’t a son without disability or infirmity. What I needed was a life renewed, a life rededicated to a new kind of service. Like most vocations, it is not necessarily the one I would have chosen or picked up for myself, if I had all the choices before me and all the power in the world to make them happen. It is not even one I would have deemed possible.
This new life of service—to our son, to our local and worldwide community—is not without hardship. It is not simple or always happy. But it is Good, and it is Holy.
And our family’s devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes, those tendril-like roots originally sprung from our hearts when we met her face to face in 2017, have blossomed into a garden of beautiful complexity that we never could have imagined, or achieved, without the graces she shares with us.
You who are suffering, never stop praying. Never stop believing that God has work for you, too, whether it be small and hidden or beyond your wildest imaginings.
Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us!
Christy Wilkens, wife and mother of six, is an armchair philosopher who lives in Austin, TX. She writes about disability, faith, doubt, suffering, community, and good reads. Her first book, Awakening at Lourdes: How an Unanswered Prayer Healed Our Family and Restored Our Faith, a memoir about a Lourdes pilgrimage with her husband and son, was released by Ave Maria Press in October 2021. Find her at christywilkens.com.
