I’ve been writing about how one of my core beliefs was formed in one, life-changing experience.
We can’t always predict the future, or control every outcome, but we can use those stories to be the basis of the statement, “This I believe.”
My statement has to do with prayer; it is a powerful and tangible thing, this I believe.
As I said four weeks ago, I haven’t always believed that prayer is necessary. It’s a concept that has mystified me many times in my life. But there have been times when the haze of my confusion parts to understanding and I must take it in. It’s not so much that I’ve solved a riddle to the demands of my questions, it’s more that in unexpected moments, I find myself learning. I am not in control, but I can listen and learn.
One of those moments came after an ordeal I experienced while working as a teacher in China.
My friend and I had been detained by Chinese military personnel for reasons that we later came to understand were quite serious. We were American. We were exploring the neighborhood around our school, taking pictures. We stumbled upon a military installation, and we didn’t realize it. We kept taking pictures, and we were apprehended. My friend destroyed her film when she handed it to one of the guards, and we found ourselves in hotel rooms, late that night, being interrogated.
I hadn’t had food or water for hours and hours, but I wasn’t hungry. I found that my body kicks itself into a hyper-calm state when it is faced with duress. I was stewing in adrenaline and nausea from the hours of breathing in cigarette smoke from my interrogators, so when they asked me, “Are you feeling tired?” I said yes, a little. When they asked me, “Are you feeling nervous?” I said no.
I sat in a chair at the far end of the hotel room, next to an interrogator who asked me questions in Chinese. We were separated by a little round table, just like the ones you’d sit at and have some popcorn or a glass of water if you were having a fun weekend getaway in a cheap hotel. Across from me, another man sat on the edge of the bed, facing me, and he repeated the questions in English. I was meant to look at the man who spoke to me in Chinese and then look to the man who spoke to me in English. I answered the man in English, then looked back to the man who spoke only Chinese as he listened to the translator.
They all smoked. They took breaks, but for hours and hours, I didn’t get out of that chair. I never even used the bathroom. I just sat there, looking to the left, looking straight ahead, giving my answers, and beginning again. They wanted to know what I was doing there, what I was studying in college, what did my parents do for work, why was I at a military unit, how many pictures did I take, what direction was I facing, why did I go to the military unit in the first place? Other people came in and out of the room, listening, taking notes, taking pictures.
I told them over and over that I had no idea where I was. I thought I was taking pictures of a cemetery. I drew a map of the cemetery and put marks on every place where I thought I had taken a picture. They asked me where my friend had taken pictures, and I had no idea, but I guessed about that too.
I knew I was innocent, but I worried about the implications of all of my answers. I happen to come from a family where my father was in the Air Force, my brother is in the Army, and my sister is in the Navy. I didn’t mention any of that at the time. I was studying to become a journalist, but I didn’t mention that either.
Somehow, I never contradicted myself.
At about 3 a.m. the English-speaking translator told me that the principal from my school had come to collect us. I reluctantly signed a copy of my “testimony” written in Mandarin Chinese characters, and I stepped into the hallway to see Principal Jiang, who looked frazzled and frantic.
Apparently, when she found out that my friend and I had been apprehended, she spent the next six hours or so calling everyone she could, trying to find us — and more importantly, trying to find who she could bribe to get us released. Eventually, she was successful.
The look on her face when I saw her told me in no uncertain terms that our release was nothing short of a miracle. As I left the hotel room, my interrogators gave me my pictures back, already developed and printed on photo paper. It was an interesting gesture.
And then I was finally back in my little apartment, all of the rest of the teachers were asleep, and I got into the shower to wash off the sweat, cigarette smoke and dirt. I was exhausted, in shock and in disbelief when the thought occurred to me, with so much force as to eliminate any doubt or question — as though it was actually someone speaking to me — that the only reason I had been set free was because of the prayers of my parents.
Of course, they had no idea that I had been arrested, or interrogated, or where I was that night. But they had gone to God every day in my behalf, then and for days before, to plead for my well-being. In that case, their prayer was answered, and I could only listen and learn that this was beyond my control. Not every prayer is answered the way we hope, but my belief is that one way or another, we are heard. When we see the impossible become real, when we experience the unlikely and we hear how the unachievable was obtained, sometimes, we can only listen and learn.
This I believe.