...that shouted the worst abuse and threatened to kill her. White families had removed their children, so she was alone in class and at play. Yet her strength and dignity amazed Coles.

Ruby�s teacher said:

�A woman spat at Ruby but missed; Ruby smiled at her. A man shook his fist at her; Ruby smiled at him. Then she walked up the stairs, and she stopped and turned and smiled one more time. You know what she told one of the marshals? She told him she prays for those people, the ones in the mob, every night before she goes to sleep.�

Dr Coles, a Harvard professor and famous child psychiatrist, decided to study her. In one of their interviews she mentioned that she prayed and hoped God would do something. Coles did not believe in God. He asked her why she prayed, and she just said, �Because.� When he asked again, she said, �Because they need praying for.� Coles thought that was cute, but did not take it seriously. Yet here was a disadvantaged child showing strength and courage that baffled an expert. He said, �I was accumulating all this information, but I was getting rather frustrated.� He had been called �the greatest living psychiatrist� by TIME magazine, and had won a genius award and Pullitzer Prize for his study of children, but now he had to admit that he could not understand this child�s superhuman dignity and courage. �Now how do you explain that?�

Coles interviewed her family. Her parents could barely read or write, and were often taunted by mobs, but they had taught her to pray about problems. Coles even came to her church as an observer. People there said that faith and prayer kept them hopeful despite poverty and racist attack. At first Coles put it down to emotionalism in the uneducated, but it obviously worked: he saw �the look of pain give way to the look of hope in countless faces.� Coles said, �How is someone like me supposed to account for that, psychologically or any other way?�

Eventually he concluded that Ruby�s prayers did something. Something powerful and beyond mere psychological explanations. Coles started praying. Today he is still fascinated by prayer and faith, and tells anyone - children or his Harvard students - that prayer is real. Ruby Bridges Hall, now in her 40s, is still praying. She�s back at the same school as a liaison officer.

Another famous psychiatrist wrote in a medical text-book:

�Prayer is a powerful and effectual worry remover. Men and women who have learned to pray with childlike sincerity, literally talking to and communing with the Heavenly Father, are in posession of a great secret whereby they can cast their care upon God, knowing that He cares for us. A clear conscience is a great step towards barricading the mind against neuroticism.�

-Dr William Sadler, Practice of Psychiatry

i got on my knees an begged her to stay,,,my prayer werent answered

good story

We aren't guaranteed to get what we want...often the answer is NO.