It looked like time might be running out for Chip Madren.
One moment he was a normal 13-year-old, and the next, doctors were telling his parents a deadly cancer was spreading in his brain.
Lea and Ken Madren turned to their faith that day in 2010. They asked for prayers.
Within hours of their request, many who heard them were making petitions on the Dunwoody, Ga.’s teen’s behalf. Within weeks, the petitioners swelled to 400, then a thousand on a social site the family started.
Chip’s Nation, as the Madrens called them, would inspire a book, and the Madrens would launch a non-profit to help other pediatric cancer patients from metro Atlanta.
Lea Madren said the family could feel the prayers undergirding them - particularly those from Scott Dockter, whom they call “our little angel.” Dockter, a father of four, had never been in the habit of asking God for anything. At 45, he’d led a rather charmed life.
He was a successful businessman, happily married to his wife of 25 years. Their children were healthy.
But his neighbor’s boy, Chip, wasn’t. Chip needed his prayers.
It was the one thing given his busy schedule that Dockter knew he could do.
And so wherever he traveled - from St. Louis to New York and New England - Dockter ducked into churches, and synagogues and temples to pray.
“Lord, please give Chip a day with no pain,” he prayed. “Let him get through the day without vomiting.” “Please dispel the evil from his body.”
Chip was in his first week of seventh grade when his life changed.
On the morning of Aug. 17, 2010, he felt lethargic and complained of blurred vision. Maybe the wake-boarding crash he’d had the week before had left him with a slight concussion.
Lea and Ken Madren picked him up from school to see the family’s pediatrician.
“Our lives went from zero to 60 in about 2.2 seconds,” Chip would say later.
Doctors told the Madrens their boy had Metastatic Anaplastic Medulloblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer.
Lea Madren grabbed the trash can and threw up.
“It was the nightmare that every parent has,” she recalled.
Twelve hours later, Chip was in surgery.
On Aug. 20, while doctors worked to remove a tumor from Chip’s brain’s stem, the Madrens started a CaringBridge, a protected social network site to keep friends and family informed.
“Please pray for my child,” Ken Madren wrote.
All his life, Dockter had been taught that prayer changed things.
Like the Madrens, Dockter was a devout Catholic. But as much as he believed in the power of prayer, he was “uncomfortable with overt religion.” To him religion, like prayer, was a private matter.
But time seemed to be running out for Chip. The surgery had left him unable to speak. He could barely see and couldn’t walk.
Dockter found himself not only praying but talking more about his faith, brushing away any notion that death might come.
“I’d been praying a long, long time, but it was more robotic,” Dockter said. “I could see how sad the family was, so it made me think about it a little more.”
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