Hello God!! Are You There?

HELLO GOD!!! ARE YOU THERE

As Nathan sat in the dimly lit room of the hospital, his hands clasped tightly together, Bible in hand, he looked toward the old asbestos particle ceiling, and the tears came as he asked,

“Are you there, God? …It’s me.”

Nathan was or is a devout Christian. At this point in time, Nathan was not sure what he believed in. With his hands clasped together holding the Bible, he waited for an answer, a sign, a voice, that would explain to him why the accident happened. Nathan had several stitches in his leg, head, and right eye. He knew all these wounds would heal eventually, but the broken arm was completely different. He remembered putting his arm in front of his wife as the car slid on the ice, and in the rear-view mirror, he could see the large green semi losing control, just as he had…and then the sound of breaking glass, crunching metal, and then silence, followed by darkness.

When Nathan finally opened his left eye (his right eye was too swollen to open), he saw white, fluorescent lights and the smell—well, he knew he was in a hospital.

“Dr. Richards!” Someone yelled to Nathan’s right side. “Room 304…The patient is awake.”

Nathan looked up and saw a white male in a lab coat—obviously, this was Dr. Richards.

“Hey Nathan, how are you feeling?”

Nathan and Sarah were portraits of marital harmony. Married for seven years, their courtship blossomed in the pews of their hometown church, the two had woven their lives together with threads of love, faith, and laughter.

They had started out in a tiny apartment and after several years, they had earned enough money to buy their dream ranch house. Nathan remembered Sarah’s humming in the kitchen each morning, the scent of her cinnamon rolls mixing with Nathan’s robust coffee.

Since they first married, Nathan and Sarah had envisioned a life filled with the simple joys of life, like quiet holidays spent in each other's company, someday the laughter of children filling their home, and evenings spent side by side, either lost in the pages of a book or offering prayers for their church family. Their circle of friends often looked upon their steady bond with a mix of admiration and envy.

Faith had always been the cornerstone of their relationship, not merely a crutch to lean on during tough times, but a lens through which they viewed the world, coloring even the most challenging moments with hope and resilience.

But some things, no matter how sturdy the foundations, can shake you to your core.

It was on a Tuesday evening, the sky threatening flurries, that Nathan and Sarah drove to visit Sarah’s sister’s newborn. The highways sparkled with ice, invisible and lethal. As they rounded a bend just outside town, Nathan’s tires lost grip. He gasped, feeling everything slip into slow-motion. He heard Sarah’s frightened breath, saw headlights in the rearview then the monstrous silhouette of the green semi, sliding, helpless.

The collision was unavoidable. In that instant, Nathan reached instinctively, bracing his wife, wrapping his good arm protectively over her chest. The world spun into chaos, glass shattered, metal shrieked, limbs crushed. Then: total silence.

“Hey Nathan, how are you feeling?” Dr. Richards asked again gently, his eyes searching Nathan’s battered face.

Nathan tried to speak. His throat rasped, tongue heavy and dry.

“Sarah…my wife?” Nathan croaked.

Dr. Richards paused, looking at the nurse standing to his right. The air thinned.

“She’s here, Nathan in the hospital...We will discuss that later. I need you to get your strength back, first.”

“Can I see…her?” Nathan croaked. He tried to get up and had no strength, and only one arm would function…his right arm…something was wrong with his right arm…he couldn’t feel it…

“Oh! God…Dear God are you there?” He thought to himself as he turned his head to the right and noticed the large white compress wrap…stopped at the shoulder.

Then in a split-second Nathan’s mind clicked like a gear catching onto its cog’s teeth.

“Sarah…Where is Sarah?” With all of his strength Nathan tried to sit up, but the pain was now excruciating.

“Not yet. Nathan…” Dr. Richard’s and the nurses held Nathan in place.

“The doctors are still with her. We’ll update you as soon as we can.”

He could barely breathe. Each inhale brought him sharp reminders of splintered bone and torn flesh—but the real pain, he realized, was spiritual, existential. He reached for the Bible, clutching it with a kind of desperation he’d never known.

He cursed the ice, the truck, the randomness. And as he lay in the antiseptic air of the hospital bed, the world shrank. The God he’d always felt wasn't only distant…God was all but silent.

First the hours blurred together, and then the days began to blur together, marked only by changes in the green numbers on the wall-mounted clock and the cautious, somber footsteps of doctors and family.

Nathan's mother came, her face tight with anxiety; his father squeezed his good hand without words. Nurses moved efficiently, their murmurings and brisk movements an undercurrent to the constant beep and hiss of medical machines…and still no one would give him any update on his Sarah.

The hospital room had become claustrophobic and cavernous. Every shadow seemed to stretch, the corners of the room deep with echoing fear. The overhead light was dim, smeared halos forming around every source of illumination. The ceiling tiles yellowed, shadowed, speckled with hints of old asbestos loomed above him. The same ceiling every other patient was looking at…and Nathan hated it, and still no one was giving him any information on his lovely Sarah. They kept telling him he needed no distractions right now, he needed to concentrate on his healing.

One night, unable to sleep, Nathan whispered aloud in the darkness.

“God, where are you? Did you see this? Did you let this happen? Is there a reason, or just…nothingness?”

He squeezed the Bible so tightly it bent under his grip.

“Why her? Why us? I don’t understand!” His voice cracked, almost childish, the sounds swallowed up in the hush of the late hour.

He waited for a sign, a warm feeling, anything at all. The ceiling didn’t reply.

When Nathan closed his eyes, flashes of happier times assaulted him.

Sarah laughing in their little kitchen, bathed in golden evening light, flour on her cheek. Their walks beside the old river, boots crunching in autumn leaves, holding hands and singing softly. The night he proposed on the church steps, as stars wheeled overhead. The church family gathering around them, laying hands on their shoulders, praying for their coming life together.

Their faith was always unshakeable then prayers before meals, hymns sung off-key over dishes, deep discussions about God’s plan. Even their occasional disagreements circled back to forgiveness and shared trust.

But the memory would twist, tearing itself apart the flash of brakes, Sarah’s scream. The brief moment before the crash when a cold, terrible certainty swept over him. If he could have done even one thing differently, would she be safe?

He replayed the drive over and over: the decision to leave just after sunset, the checked weather report, the half-hearted joke about “driving by faith, not by sight” that now seemed cruel in hindsight. Choices cascading toward disaster.

Days passed. Nathan’s rage burned and then cooled, replaced by a numbness he didn’t recognize. He prayed, then stopped, then started again. The prayers changed.

“Please, God, save my Sarah. Please let her be oka.”

He spoke to God as if confiding in a friend who’d turned his back. He whispered at night, pleaded in the early light. Sometimes he just sat silent, waiting for an answer that never came.

He heard the chaplain’s gentle knock, accepting the offer to pray even when

Nathan was on the edge of turning his back on his religion and the God in which he believed.

“She’s strong,” the chaplain would say. “God is with you, Nathan. Even in

the darkness.”

“Chaplain…No one is telling me a thing about Sarah…So, the only thing I can assume is that Sarah is in bad shape, or worse.”

“I can tell you my son, your Sarah has some serious brain swelling and the doctors are doing everything they can. I do not agree with them keeping you in the dark about your wife.” The Chaplain opened up his bible and reiterated that God was with him and his wife.

Nathan's laugh was brittle. “It doesn’t feel that way.”

The chaplain didn't scold. He simply bowed his head, joining his suffering.

Nathan’s mother clung to hope and recited familiar verses to him.

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord..."

Nathan wanted to believe them—it was their anchor, after all. But in the sterile quiet, faith felt far away.

It was the night of the seventh day, just past midnight, when a storm battered the hospital windows. Nathan jerked awake to a voice he had never heard in his hospital room…it was almost as if the voice echoed within his room.

“Nathan? Nathan, I need you to come with me now!”

His vision was blurred, but as he awakened, he caught sight of the nurse gliding down the dimly lit hallway. She moved with purpose, visiting room after room, each one housing patients who seemed to teeter on the edge of existence. In the stillness of the night, it was as if she was a harbinger, tending to souls not long for this world.

“Nathan Sarah is seizing. She needs to hear your voice. You need to come quick?”

The next thing Nathan remembers is that he is now in a wheelchair being rolled to his Sarah’s room. Her room was several down from his.

Nathan heard so many monitors blaring, from different rooms, as the nurse rolled him into Sarah’s room, he saw the big black letters…I.C.U.

Nathan glimpsed Sarah, pale and unmoving, a team crowded around her. He prayed without words, tears burning tracks down his face.

He sat near her bed, fists clenched, and at last, his prayer shifted.

“God, if you’re there…please help my Sarah, I need you. I need God…My Sarah needs you…You gave your son for me and Sarah, if it is your will, I would give my life for your word and her life.” His tears began flow as he moved closer and held Sarah’s hand tightly.

Something changed not relief, not certainty, but a gentle release. Like breathing out after holding his breath too long.

The night receded. Eventually, the hallway emptied, and Nathan did not leave Sarah’s side. She looked smaller than he remembered, so quiet, but somehow at peace. He touched her hand and whispered:

“I’m not giving up in you…and either is God. I love you.”

Sarah remained stable, though fragile, through the next days. The swelling in her brain decreased, and the machines needed to keep her alive began to taper off.

The doctors explained, cautiously optimistic, her progress was due in part to the speed they’d been able to relieve the pressure. Recovery would be slow, uncertain, but the explained to Nathan…

“Brain swelling like your wife had…is usually fatal. Honestly Nathan we have no idea how he swelling went down.”

Nathan’s gratitude was immense, and his prayers became one’s of hope.

“Her brain scans came back positive…Now we wait for her to wake up in her own time,” Dr. Richards said. “There will be therapy, questions, days she may not remember. But don’t underestimate her.”

Dr. Richards started to walk out of Sarah’s room and then he stopped and turned and looked at Nathan. “One question Nathan?”

“What is Dr. Richards?”

“How exactly did you get out of bed and into your wheelchair the other night?”

“The nurse in my room…” Nathan paused. “The white-haired nurse helped me into…” Nathan paused as if there was a spot in his memory that was totally blank.

“What white-haired nurse?” Dr. Richards asked, as he walked closer to Nathan.

“The one that rolled me into Sarah’s room?” Nathan was still lost as to how he got into his wheelchair.

“Nathan, you rolled into your wife’s room…with one arm and the forearm of your other arm in cast.” Dr. Richards whose I.Q. was higher than most scratched his head with his left hand…and dismissed himself from Sarah’s room. Dr. Richard hated puzzles he could not solve.

*****

A week after the night of the seizures, Nathan was reading quietly at her bedside when Sarah’s hand twitched. He looked up to her eyes blinking open, dazed and unfocused.

“Nathan?” Her voice was weak, barely above a whisper.

He wept, forehead pressed to her hand, speechless. All the words he’d searched for failed him, replaced by gratitude as wide as the horizon.

Sarah’s recovery took months—learning to walk again, piecing together memories. Through it all, Nathan sat with her by the hospital window, reading scripture, sharing stories, sometimes just holding her hand in silence.

There were setbacks, days of frustration and sorrow. But Nathan never again let the silence drive him to despair.

*****

A year after the accident, Nathan watched Sarah as she planted lilies in the garden behind their house. Her stride was slower, a faint scar traced her hairline, but she smiled as she hummed, her song rising into the bright spring air.

Nathan joined her, kneeling on the fresh earth, his useless arm now permanently stiff but strong enough to steady her as she rose.

Their faith was changed, not diminished, but seasoned—more honest, less certain, but stronger for its wrestling. Nathan would never forget the cold terror of those nights, nor the ceiling tiles above his hospital bed.

But he carried forward, a survivor, a partner, a believer—forever marked by brokenness but not broken.

He learned the silence of God did not mean absence. He knew faith sometimes meant simply enduring, loving fiercely in the face of suffering, and believing in the possibility of resurrection—not only in death but in every shattered thing set gently, patiently right again.

Hope, he now knew, was found not in the answer, but in the holding on.

Nathan held no contempt nor anger towards the accident…His and Sarah’s love continued to grow much like lilies through the mulch, strong, penetrating, reaching toward the light…reaching towards God…

Nathan knew the answer now and forever…every night before bed him and Sarah on bended knee.

“Hello God! Are you there? We know you are.”