My experience of God

My experience of God

January 2016

By Anu Mehta

My God-fearing grandmother led an unhappy and lonely life despite praying to God, 24X7, and this, I must confess, left me rather confused.

Since I had not experienced God, I logically concluded that He did not exist, and did not follow any ritual or even pray.

Then something strange happened. I experienced God around one month after my son Arjun was born. Arjun had developed a stubborn fever. That night, God visited me in my dream. I dreamt of Arjun lying in pain in a hospital bed, his tender skin covered with intravenous needles. In my dream I could almost hear God instructing me, “Take him to a hospital. Show him to a qualified doctor. He is not well. Ask the doctor to do all the tests. The doctor might not appreciate your insistence and will judge you as an over-protective mother, but you must insist that all medical tests are done. So far no damage has occurred. Do what I am asking you to do and he will be fine.”

As I woke in the morning, I acted upon this dream. Arjun, to my utter dismay, had to be hospitalised. He was diagnosed with Posterior Urethral Valve (PUV) Disorder – an obstructive developmental anomaly in the urethra and genito-urinary system of male newborns. In my son’s case, the infection had set in to the extent that I could have lost Arjun forever. During this time, doctors had even detected a murmur in Arjun’s heart, but luckily, a sonography ruled this birth defect out immediately. After his admission into the hospital, the doctors candidly mentioned that they might not be able to save my child. Against the odds and to my relief, he was operated successfully.

I felt gratitude to the instructions given to me in my dream. Simply put, those instructions saved my first baby.

Four years ago, a few months after Arjun turned 18, he was ready to leave for Montréal, Canada, for his undergraduate studies at McGill University. A general health check-up was required for the issuance of his student visa, for which he visited our family doctor, Dr. Chichgar. The doctor examined Arjun’s chest with a stethoscope and immediately declared that Arjun had a hole in his heart and needed surgery, preferably before he left for Montreal.

Test after test confirmed that Arjun had a rather huge hole in the heart. The doctors were amazed that he was alive and hadn’t shown any symptoms of his illness all these years. In fact, he had indulged in every activity that people with a normal heart would have found exhausting. On August 4th, 2011, he was successfully operated on and went on to make a full and speedy recover. Arjun flew to Montreal 15 days after his surgery.

I believe God saved him twice! Today, Arjun is 22, happy and healthy. He graduated from McGill this summer and is now back home with me. I thank God for protecting him and I know that there must be a hidden purpose for him to be alive today despite previous health issues. And furthermore, I feel blessed that God had visited me and carried me during those rather challenging times.