Now that we've all eaten and drank far too much, gotten bored of the festive telly, had the annual arguments over board games and are desperately searching for something else to do...

...how about a story? Except it's not really a "story", i.e. not fictional...but it is well worth reading (made me cry a little bit...so be warned...) and, if nothing else, will put you in absolute awe of this woman and her family's faith and the jaw-dropping power of prayer.

Okay so I came across this via the world of blogs and have been absolutely blown away by it. There was this lady, Bonnie, who also has a blog called Learning to be a Newlywed and for the past three months she has been asking for anyone and everyone to pray for her son, James, who was born back in September. After an eight-hour labour (at home, I feel I must add) the baby was born without a heartbeat and they tried to resuscitate him with oxygen and chest compressions whilst they waited for an ambulance. His heart didn't beat for 61 minutes. I can't even imagine what that's like...to have to try and bring your tiny little child back from the brink moments after he's born...they're so much braver than I would have been...didn't give up on him, not even for a second. And with it taking so long to get his heart to beat properly...it would scare you witless...takes more than human strength to keep holding on. They were able to get him to the hospital where, as you might expect, he was put into intensive care. You can read what she wrote about this on her blog here.

A few days later she posted this, listing all the different things going wrong with her little baby boy and asking for people to pray for God to heal them. The thing she really highlights in her post is for people to ask for Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen to intercede for him...I'll be honest and say I have only a passing knowledge of who he was but, bless her, Bonnie had total faith that he would pray for her son. She also has the following Prayer for James on the side of her blog;

Eternal Father, You alone grant us every blessing in Heaven and on earth, through the redemptive mission of Your Divine Son, Jesus Christ, and by the working of the Holy Spirit.

If it be according to Your Will, glorify Your servant, Fulton J. Sheen, by granting the favor I now request through his prayerful intercession - that James Fulton's organs heal and function normally and that he is spared any brain damage. I make this prayer confidently through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

And after that although some things got better (for example he began to pee) not everything was looking up as, after an EEG, it turned out the poor thing had very little brain activity and this was affecting other things like his gag reflex. She wrote this very short post on the results. What I find so inspiring about this is that even though this was probably one of her darkest hours, to hear her one week old had so little brain activity, she didn't stop praying, didn't stop trusting and hoping in God. I hope that, were I ever to be in her shoes, I'd show the same kind of faith she did.

Over the next couple of months he had ups and downs, seizures and surgeries and goodness knows what else. To James' parents it probably feels like an awful lot longer what with the rollercoaster they've been riding and all. But what, if you read each and every blog post, do they keep on doing? Praying. No matter how desperate or how bleak things seemed to get they kept on praying. And, slowly but surely, he began to get stronger and stronger...but there was still this looming worry that James might have lasting brain damage. So where, oh where is the Christmas miracle you might ask? Well if you read this post you'll see that, only a few days ago, this very lucky (and probably very tired) little family really did get a miracle when it turned out that he has no brain damage! Yay! (x 1,000,000,000,000,000)

Now after reading of James' recovery and the sheer joy of his mum...go and look back at those first few posts...at how unlikely it was that he was going to survive...and then you try and tell me that prayer doesn't accomplish anything! Even though he is now out of the woods so-to-speak I will keep them all in my prayers...and thank God for what he did for this little boy and for giving his parents the strenght to carry on.