Donna VanLiere: "Lord, Why Aren't Any of Your People Praying for Me?" | Unfolding Short Stories
The Unfolding
Northwestern Media
4.9 • 867 Ratings
🗓️ 13 January 2026
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
During one of the hardest seasons of her life, Donna VanLiere was searching for prayer. A painful neurological condition made her suffering impossible to miss, yet prayer never came. Her honest cry to God became a turning point that led to healing and a calling. Today, Donna is a New York Times bestselling author and a passionate advocate for prayer in the life of the church.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I was just so sad and I thought, Lord, why are any of your people praying for me? |
| 0:05.3 | God's story? Your life. |
| 0:10.2 | Unfolding short stories. |
| 0:13.3 | Have you ever told someone, I'll pray for you, but then you quickly forget. |
| 0:18.3 | Well, today's short story from Donna Van Lear gives us a new idea. |
| 0:22.5 | Why not just pray for the person right now? When Donna was experiencing one of her worst seasons, |
| 0:28.7 | you could visibly see it. A neurological condition twisted her neck. And people ask questions. |
| 0:35.8 | They did express concern. And they even said, I will pray for you. |
| 0:40.7 | But if they did, they didn't do it near her. Eventually, Donna cried out to God. Lord, why aren't any of your |
| 0:49.1 | people praying for me? Hi, I'm Donna Van Lear, and it's a great joy to be with you today. And I just wanted to tell you a little bit about my own |
| 1:00.5 | journey of faith. About 13 years ago, I had come back from a trip, and I realized that my |
| 1:09.7 | neck was really tight tight and for some reason |
| 1:13.7 | it just kept bothering me the muscles in my neck just kept bothering me in such a way that they |
| 1:19.2 | never bothered me before and it got to be so irritating and my husband said why do you keep doing |
| 1:26.0 | that with your neck and because I was doing something tried to stretch stretch it out. And I said, I don't know, it's just really bothering me since I got back. And so he said, well, I don't know. It seems like you need to go to the doctor. And I went to the doctor. And my doctor took one look at me. And he said, you know what, I got a, I got you set you up an appointment |
| 1:44.3 | with a neurologist. And I went to see the neurologist and he assessed me. And without a whole lot |
| 1:51.7 | of small talk, he just said, you have a brain disorder. We don't really know how it happens. |
| 1:58.5 | But this is what it does. It sends conflicting signals to two opposing muscles at the |
| 2:05.3 | same time. So it will tell two opposing muscles to fire up and work at the same time. For instance, |
| 2:11.3 | it could tell the bicep and the tricep, both of you work at the same time. So in this case, |
| 2:16.6 | it was affecting the muscles in my neck, |
| 2:19.3 | and it was turning my head over my right shoulder to the point where eventually my head was |
... |
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