On the Hallmark channel at Christmas time it snows every day. The characters walk through the snow in trendy clothes. Inside each home, the fireplace burns continually, the holiday tree is perfectly decorated, and there are mounds of gifts underneath.

The problems in the plot of the story are not earth-shaking, and you can depend on a happy ending every time. We need those kinds of stories–they take our minds off the real world. However, those are not my favorite stories.

Please write a book or make a movie and tell me about a hopeless person, an impossible situation, a pandemic, a tragedy, and then show me how the protagonist struggled through hard times, almost gave up, and then, somehow, managed to survive. Those are the kinds of stories I survive on.

American history is full of true stories of survival. I read about the financial panic that hit our country in 1857, when more than thirty thousand men wandered the streets of New York City, jobless, and in despair. Jeremiah Lamphier, a quiet businessman, took pity on these men and began praying for them. He sent out 20,000 flyers announcing a noon-day prayer meeting. In the beginning, only five men joined him. But the word about the prayer meetings began to spread, and within weeks, great numbers of men responded. Eventually, because of the New York prayer meetings, similar groups began springing up around the nation. It is estimated that one million people across the nation were touched by those prayers. Those prayers touched our nation in a mighty way.

One of my favorite stories is about the life of George Washington Carver. He has been described as the most remarkable American who ever lived. He was a child of slaves, he never knew his birth parents, and his name was never written on a birth certificate. He walked many miles in search of a school that would take a black child. In his travels, he came to the home of Mariah Watkins, a woman who had a simple, straightforward faith. She told George that God had a special plan for his life. She took him to church and introduced him to the wisdom of the Bible.

After failing to be accepted into several colleges because of his race, George Washington Carver was the first black man to be accepted at the University of Iowa. He became an artist, a musician, an agricultural scientist, and served as president of the historically black Tuskegee University, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Leaders from all over the world listened to Carver’s advice, as did three American presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge and Franklin Roosevelt.

In 1922, the boll weevil attacked the cotton crops, destroying the cotton and devastating the southern economy. Carver studied the problem and told the farmers to burn the cotton fields and then plant peanuts. Later, in the midst of a prolific peanut harvest, he prayed and asked for God’s wisdom. “Mr. Creator,” he said, “why did you make the peanut?” In answer to his prayer, Carver eventually discovered more than three hundred uses for the peanut. When he was asked about the source of his wisdom, he would often say, “God speaks to all of us each and every hour, if only we will listen. I silently ask the Creator, often moment by moment, to give me wisdom, understanding, and bodily strength to do His will. I am asking and receiving all the time.”

Jeremiah Lamphier and George Washington Carver had much in common–they each believed that they could talk to God and that He would hear their prayers and do the impossible. They believed in the Providence of God.

Virginia Dawkins is the author of a newly published book. “Please, God, Help!” is available at Amazon.