Positivity: The Power Of Prayer and Anna Fraley

In Georgetown, KY, prayer and a whole community pulling together have helped pull off a remarkable recovery for Anna Fraley:

Healing faith: Fraleys witness power of prayer in daughter’s recovery
6/11/06

She talks just a bit slower than before, pausing here and there as she searches for the right words.

She walks just a bit unsteadily, taking her time to make sure each foot plants solidly on the ground before pushing ahead with another step.

But those words and steps, once so uncertain, grow stronger every day, leading her family, her friends and even herself to just one conclusion.

Anna Fraley is a miracle.

Her story is one not only of her own survival but a story of how a family - including her parents, David and Kathy, and older sisters, Susan and Nancy - managed to pull together during a tragedy.

It’s also a story of a church, a college and an entire community embracing and rallying behind one of their own.

But mostly, to Anna and her family, it’s a story of faith.

The afternoon of April 21, Anna was on her way to her sister Nancy’s home in Lexington to borrow jewelry to wear to a formal dance her Georgetown College sorority was holding that night.

It was a trip the 20-year-old had taken many times before, traveling to Spurr Road where she was to cross railroad tracks. Anna chatted on her cell phone as she drove, listening as Nancy described from work just where at her home Anna could find the jewelry she wanted.

Anna, unaware, drove right through the warning lights and into the path of an oncoming Norfolk Southern train.

A motorist behind Anna later reported to the family that she saw Anna’s car was going to hit the southbound train. She knew Anna wasn’t going to be able to make it across the tracks unscathed. She started saying a prayer even before the car and train collided.

On the other end of the line, Nancy heard Anna’s words cut short by the sound of a train whistle.

Then the line went dead.

After a failed attempt to call Anna back, Nancy drove to the railroad crossing near her house. She just knew something horrible had happened.

“It was just a sisterly instinct,” Nancy said. “I had that gut, intuitive thought that something might be wrong.”

Nancy arrived at the crossing to find a blur of emergency lights, all gathered near a mangled mess of what was once Anna’s car. She was able to let officials know that the unconscious victim they were extricating from the vehicle that had been thrown off the tracks wasn’t some young, unidentified girl.

It was her sister.

Anna’s mother, Kathy, was just leaving Anne Mason Elementary, where she works as a music teacher, when she got the call that Anna had been in an accident.

She traveled to the University of Kentucky Medical Center where they had rushed her daughter to the emergency room, all the while reciting James 5:16, “The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and wonderful results.”

“I said that all the way to the hospital,” Kathy said. “I claimed it, and I reminded God that he gave us that promise.”

“You’ve just got to carry her,” Kathy remembers praying to God.

Kathy and Nancy arrived at the hospital first and were later joined by David, a chemistry professor at Georgetown College. Doctors told them Anna had an open skull fracture and needed surgery. Amazingly, she had no other injuries or broken bones.

They signed permission papers and waited.

Anna made it through surgery but remained in a coma. The family held onto hope that she would be just fine.

“We were all clinging to that hope,” Kathy said.

As word spread of Anna’s accident, so did the number of people praying for her recovery. A prayer chain at the Fraleys’ church, Faith Baptist, sprang into action. Students and faculty at Georgetown College were praying, as well.

“You could feel it,” Kathy said. “You just knew that something was happening.”

Slowly, a set of what the family can only describe as a series of small miracles began to take place.

“It just all of a sudden blossomed, and she started doing wonderfully well,” David said.

The first positive sign they received was the morning after the accident, a Saturday, when a nurse first got Anna to respond.

By Monday, Anna told a visitor she knew her name was “Anna, Anna Fraley.”

Then, Anna was able to recite her Social Security number, an achievement that still amazes her father.

After spending six days in the intensive care unit, Anna’s condition was upgraded, and she was moved to another floor in the hospital for five days. She was then sent to Cardinal Hill Rehabilitation Center.

On May 19, just two days shy of a month since her accident, Anna was allowed to go home.

“Who would have ever thought that?” Kathy asked. “Probably nobody if they had just heard about the accident on the news. But we all had a lot of faith and hope, and it just pulled us through.”

The family is also amazed at the wave of community support in response to Anna’s accident. Anna’s hospital room was filled with cards made by children from Georgetown schools, and a family friend from church started a prayer tree in front of the Fraleys’ home where those wanting to show their support could tie yellow ribbons on branches. The tree holds more ribbons than can be easily counted.

A former Georgetown College student also started a Web site where friends could post messages to Anna, letting her know she is in their thoughts and prayers.

“That’s why we are so humbled by it all,” Kathy said. “We have been so blessed by the outpouring of our community.”

Two days after coming home, Anna returned for the first time to Faith Baptist Church, where she received a standing ovation from the congregation.

“It was my second homecoming really,” Anna said of the church service. “I kept telling people, ‘It’s so good to be home,’ and I could also say that at Faith.”

Anna doesn’t remember the accident at all, and she is thankful for that. Her entire ordeal in the hospital is also something that doesn’t quite register, with her first clear memories being when she arrived at Cardinal Hill.

But one thing that Anna has known from the very beginning of her accident is that God has been working through her.

“I thank God for everything that he has done in me,” Anna said. “I have complete faith and 100 percent behind that that God has been with me every step of the way. The reason I can is because of the miracles of God.”

Almost every day since her return home, Anna has run into strangers on the street or in stores who have told her that they prayed for her.

“It’s unfathomable,” Anna said. “In some ways, it boggles me to think of how many have prayed for me.”

Her road to recovery is not yet over. Anna, now wearing her blond hair short as a result of it being shaved before her surgery, still has a long road of physical and occupational therapy ahead of her. But it’s a challenge she is embracing.

“I know that working hard is the only way to improve, and I am ready to do that,” Anna said. “I know that will only help me get better.”

Her attention is now focused on getting well enough to return to Georgetown College in the fall, where she will finish up her senior year as a psychology major.

“That’s what I’ve planned all along is to be back in school in August, ready to go,” Anna said. “Looking forward to it.”

….. (A miracle is) just what she is, as the family has no other explanation for why their daughter and sister managed to escape such a tragic ordeal relatively unharmed. They can’t explain why Anna survived a situation that so many others would not have or why Anna has recovered as well as she has.

Rather than ask why, they instead thank God and everyone who prayed for Anna.

“It’s really a miracle. It’s been one miracle right after another,” Kathy said. “We are thankful, and we attribute it to lots of earnest prayer and faith.”

“Yep, God is good,” Anna replied. “Always.”