Have Not A Prayer

She was cold when they found her. The blood that once ran through her tiny body when she frolicked with friends in the forest and had bum rushed her blushing cheeks when she bumped into her crush at school, was still, never to move again, save the beckoning of gravity. The police had arrived at the request of concerned relatives, and when I try to imagine having to be the person to break this horrible news to them, my mind stops me within seconds with a chemical signal I interpret to mean “Road Closed – Threat of Landslide.”
She was eleven. Ten years of consciousness, nine years of language, seven years of literacy. She had not even a fair taste of life, but a faint aroma of it.
She was murdered, not by some psychopath in a park at night, not even by the mild diabetes, which eventually took her life. She was murdered by her parents; her wealthy, white, suburban parents in her bed in a wealthy, white suburban home. For one month she lay dying in that bed. For one month the sounds of her tiny feet slapping across the hardwood floors were replaced by a morose cacophony of moans and cries, and, in her last few days, into a silent coma.
Mom and dad witnessed this all unfold; they weren’t strung out or too busy to notice. But even though they had they means and opportunity to, they chose not to take her to a doctor. If they had, a small amount of insulin could have provided her the probability of a normal and full life. No, they opted to wager the life of their young daughter on the power of prayer. Every day, as they watched her symptoms worsen, they neglected to ask a local health professional for help and opted to continue to petition an invisible guy in the sky.
I’m glad I live in a country where people are free to believe what they wish and practice it publicly and privately. I am glad to live in a country where, when people violate that trust by using those beliefs to endanger others, they can be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But truly I lament living in a land where most people don’t know this simple truth: One million thoughtful prayers do far, far less than one helpful action.