For a dear friend, you know who you are:

You have to expect. You have to believe. As in Jesus' parable of the Importunate Friend and the Unjust Judge, you had to keep at it. It took work. It took practice... More than anything else, it took faith. It was faith that unbound the hands of Jesus so that through your prayers his power could flow and miracles could happen, healing could happen, because where faith was, healing always was too... and there was no power on earth that could prevent it. Inside us all...there was a voice of doubt and disbelief which sought to drown out our prayers even as we were praying them, but we were to pray down that voice for all we were worth because it was simply the product in us of old hurts, griefs, failures, of all that the world had done to try to destroy our faith. More even than our bodies, it was these hurtful memories that needed healing. For God, all time is one, and we were to invite Jesus into our past as into a house that has been locked up for years - to open windows and doors for us so that light and life could enter at last, to sweetp out the debris of decades, to drive back the shadows. The healing of memories was like the forgiveness of sins...We were to believe in spite of not believing.

Frederick Buechner retelling a teaching of Agnes Sanford.