Dear readers, join me in a nostalgic trip back to a childhood moment where a simple, yet odd prayer — for an eyelash to grow as long as my nose — shaped my understanding of faith.
In the cozy sanctuary of my childhood room on 7th Avenue, with its saintly icons standing as silent witnesses, I knelt each night with eager hands pressed together in prayer. My mother, Evangelia, told me with confidence, “Prayer can make anything happen.” I clung to her words, letting them shape my youthful expectations of divine intervention.
Charged with this belief, I embarked on a celestial experiment. In a blend of naivety and boldness I asked God for a sign — for one of my eyelashes to grow as long as my nose. This singular wish, strange as it was, served as a litmus test for the reach of my faith.
Under the serene gaze of painted saints, I launched my nightly petitions with the certainty they pierced the heavens. Each dawn brought with it a race to the bathroom mirror, my heart pounding with the hope the new day would showcase a miraculous response.
The day finally arrived when my prayer appeared to take physical form. There, in the bathroom mirror, I saw it - the eyelash.
Triumphantly longer than its companions, the eyelash boldly proclaimed my success. Laughter and cheers spilled from my lips and I quickly ran to the kitchen to share my miracle with my mother. My jubilant exclamations shattered the early morning stillness as I paraded my answered prayer in front of her.
Evangelia snipped my joy with a simple gesture. She unceremoniously plucked the mysterious, wondrous lash and sent me off to St. Augustine’s with nothing but my lunchbox. Her calm dismissal of my “miracle” served as a grounding force, gently nudging me towards a deeper understanding of faith.
Perhaps, she suggested without saying, the spectacle is not the answered prayer itself, but the courage to believe in the possibility of the impossible.
In the tangle of adult life, I often find my prayers more hesitant, the results less immediate. And, I long to return to that time when I believed so completely. In the quiet of my own nights, I understand what Evangelia meant: the substance of prayer is not in the clamour of receiving, but in the silent acknowledgment that we are heard.
My bedroom on 7th Avenue, with its watchful icons and my hopeful voice rising in the dark, is where I learned the power of prayer and the presence of a listening God.
It's a conversation that began in the innocence of childhood and continues to this day, an enduring dialogue with the endless.
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