On July 25th, 2017 my life changed in a huge way. I became the sister of an almost-dead human. My sister suffered life threatening injuries after being run over by a Mack truck while riding her bike. She spent three months in the hospital, but those first few weeks are still a blur. Surgeries every other day, constant fear of loss of life, loss of her leg.

Merely nine days before, my husband and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary. I vividly remember sitting in Apparatus Room in Downtown Detroit discussing that first year. It was wonderful. Combining our lives, while not perfect, was pretty smooth. Our families celebrated holidays together. We had a routine down. We were comfortable.

Sitting in the ICU, waiting rooms, and hospital coffee shops is not an enjoyable experience. Trauma surgery and treatment is a messy, frustrating, nonlinear business. I’m a research analyst and my parents are engineers, we crave linear actions and relationships. Every day stories changed. Seven months later, we still learn new things about those first critical days from doctors and staff members.

The feelings that accompanied this were numerous…but none pleasant. Anger, grief, frustration, panic, abandonment, all multiplied by utter helplessness and endless waiting.

For the first few weeks, thoughts and prayers were the only help we could accept. We couldn’t wrap our mind around who could bring what to us at the hospital, we moved around from ICU to surgical waiting back to ICU because the surgeons were busy. It was survival mode, stuck in a loop of grief and trauma. Thoughts and prayers broke through that fog and started us on the journey to ask for help.

In those moments, I couldn’t pray. I could sat in the chapel at Detroit Receiving (a truly awful place) and sobbed. I sat there any begged God to deliver my family from this evil. I even, the day of the accident, prayed for my friend’s baby to be safely delivered (her water had broken before work). But I couldn’t pray for myself, I didn’t know what I needed. I couldn’t pray for my family, the emotions were, and sometimes still are, too overwhelming.

And so I asked others. Strangers prayed for us. I received cards from around the world offering thoughts and prayers for Amanda’s healing. Prayers for our family to have strength to care for her and ourselves. Prayers and prayers and prayers. People offered tangible help as well, but in the fog of trauma, knowing that others were lifting us up in prayer WAS actually meaningful.

The magnitude of prayer that our family received during my Amanda’s accident gave us strength. It was a tangible thing: A friend would share the post and their friends would comment they were praying. I would sit in the ICU next to Mandi, intubated and all, reading her peoples’ comments, how much they loved her, that they were praying for her. No one could visit, but those words visibly calmed her down (intubated patients are never very calm about it!). They were tangible reminders of my community that I could go back to and have it boost my tired soul again and again.

I saw community. I saw strength. I saw an army of support. I saw people giving me what I couldn’t give myself.

No, a literal truck full of prayers and thoughts didn’t pull into my driveway, but at a time when I couldn’t put into words what I needed, peoples’ prayers were tangible and gave me strength. While my friends in Northern Ireland couldn’t necessarily bring me food, their thoughts and prayers, the realization that my support network was worldwide, made it easier to ask for help from friends here.

There’s a false dichotomy running around social media these days. Thoughts and prayers vs. policy and action. As someone who prays deeply, I pray regularly for those who suffer from tragedies from being run over by a Mack truck to those displaced by hurricanes to families who suffer from gun violence, not just school shootings, but also accidental gun injuries (like my uncle) and murders (like another uncle).

My prayers though don’t replace action or my policy opinions. In fact, the same faith that drives me to pray, drives me to support policies that protect all human life, that value dignity of human life. Policies like better mental health care and more strict background checks. Policies that value teachers and guidance counselors for their invaluable contributions to our society’s future.

The edgy thing to do is scoff at prayers as if they’re meaningless. I understand that it stems, in part, from meaningless blather from politicians, but that mentality still makes it so difficult to engage in policy discussions because the conversation is already too personal, too attack-y, too lopsided. It feels like no matter what I say, I won’t be heard, because I believe wholeheartedly in the power and value of prayerful support during traumatic situations.

Paging through some of the coverage from Florida this week, I noticed more than one teacher/student with ashes on their forehead. While you might not find value in my prayers, they might. And so I will pray. I will also continue working in the public sphere to bring good into this world, by learning from my underrepresented neighbors in my community, by continuing to volunteer my resources to solid nonprofit organizations, and by advocating in public policy for change on many levels.

A friend, Nick Gerace, posted similar sentiments about how prayers helped him after his wife’s 3 year illness ended with him being the single dad of three young children.

We are designed to be social. If verbal abuse can hurt us, good thoughts and prayers can certainly help us. In fact, if it is all that one can do, then one can actually do much. I am proof of it, as are many I know. So, instead of criticizing the thoughts and prayers of good people, stop for a moment. Instead, try to appreciate the human condition to offer compassion. Try to understand exactly what they are there for, and don’t define their intended results as something they are not supposed to do. And, if you can’t do that, how about you ask someone what those thoughts and prayers are really worth? And if you can’t see it that way or try to understand them, how about you take the high road and say nothing at all?