the day she became a thief

She went to the hospital for a medical test. That was the day she became a thief.

Julia Sharon Tuchman freely admits that she steals other people’s prayers. Her life as a “prayer thief” began when she was leaving the hospital, dreading the oppressive 100-degree heat in New York City.

As she was leaving the hospital, she saw a sign pointing the way to the hospital’s Interfaith Chapel. The room had no obvious religious affiliation, only an altar and flowers. Grateful for the air conditioning, she sat down on a wooden bench.

The only other person in the room was a woman dressed in surgical scrubs, praying at the altar. After the woman finished her prayer and left, Julia began praying herself. She prayed for “help and for strength” that she needed to “deal with chronic illness and so many other challenges” she was facing at that time. Because she had almost given up in the past, she prayed for the strength not to give up this time.

She prayed for her family and friends who were experiencing hardships. She spoke to her grandmother Doris, who had died in 2000, asking her for help as well. Then she spoke a Hebrew prayer she had learned, said the Lord’s Prayer and prayed another prayer of her own.

When the time came for Julie to leave, she noticed a lined, spiral-bound notebook on a wooden stand against the back wall of the chapel, a pen by it. It was a prayer book, filled with handwritten prayers of people who had prayed in the chapel before her. Some were written in proper English; some in broken English. Other prayers were written in foreign languages.

She read through some prayers, seeing the writers through their words. Because the prayers were written, she decided that the “silent prayers of many were not silent here” and “felt that these prayers to God had to be shared.” She took out her notebook from her bag. She copied down a prayer, wondering if there was “a copyright on prayers, “but believing that if there were, the prayers were “copyrighted to God.”

She needed these prayers. That is when she became the Prayer Thief.

Read Julie’s emotional and moving thoughts as she read and copied the prayers of other people who, like her, sought refuge, peace and hope in a small hospital chapel. The Prayer Thief

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