Someone I love was in the hospital. I thought about him off and on all day, wondering if I should call or even could call. But prayer and gratitude for him were within reach, so I leaned into them. 

 

This man knows his computers, and was facile with email and faxing while most of us were still using stamps. I remember him trying to explain the capacity to communicate with people in another state, instantly. Without talking. Phones I had come to accept. Servers were still suspect. 

 

One of the tasks I tackled, even as I prayed, was on a desktop. The keyboard rested on my lap, and the wireless mouse was a short distance away on the table. I accidentally bumped it, and it hit the floor. Not a catastrophe, but the batteries did go flying under the couch. I got down on my knees, remembering the weeks in recent history when such gymnastics were unthinkable, and retrieved the two triple As. Without the pair of energy boosters, the mouse had no influence. 

 

I noticed what felt rather miraculous, namely the capacity of a rounded, black object to give directions to a screen, which in turn talks to a website somewhere I will never go and could not enter even if I asked nicely. As someone who occasionally cannot hear my husband talking to me across the house, this is noteworthy. 

 

It occurred to me that expecting my prayers to navigate the distance between me and the patient in a hospital bed a thousand miles away was no more difficult than the connection between a mouse and a website. 

 

I kept praying.