THREE WARS,
ONE PRAYER

IThe First War

Bosnia, 1992. Gordana Smith was a young woman when war came to her country and turned ordinary life into a daily fight for bread, safety and hope. She survived it, and when the fighting ended she went on to serve as an interpreter for the American peacekeeping forces, carrying words and meaning between people who needed to understand one another.

She married an American Army officer, Larry, and when her own health failed and the doctors had no more answers, she traveled to the monastery of Ostrog in Montenegro, slept on the gravel outside its walls and prayed at the relics of St. Basil. Weeks later she learned she was expecting a child.

“Tell it to my God.”Gordana

In February 2004 her son was born, Michael Gabriel, a boy whose music, laughter and gentle heart filled their home in St. Augustine. The war was behind her, and she believed the hardest battle of her life was already over.

IIThe Second War

Then a routine injury changed everything. Mikey was misdiagnosed and overmedicated, and Gordana found herself in a war she never imagined she would have to fight again, this time in a different language, on a different continent, and inside the American healthcare system.

She carried his records, her questions and her prayers into every room where decisions about her son were being made. She studied, she searched for answers, and she refused to stop advocating for the child she knew better than anyone.

“Mama, do you still believe in miracles?”Mikey, in a hospital room, March 2020

In the spring of 2020, as the world shut down, the family entered the season that tested everything. People around the world joined them in prayer every day at noon, and hope became the only thing they had left to hold.

IIIThe Third War

Beneath it all was a battle no medical chart could record. Worn down by years of fighting, Gordana found herself at war with God Himself, until her own son asked her the question that broke her open.

“Mom, how will I ever get healed if you hate God?”Mikey

In hospital hallways and in the long hours of the night she found her way back to prayer, and it became her weapon and her refuge. It was faith that kept her standing when everything else was being taken away.

IVThe Miracle

In March 2024, after days in a coma and the moment the doctors removed life support, Mikey breathed on his own. When he could speak again, he told his mother what he had seen.

“I saw Jesus. He said, ‘It’s not your time yet.’”Mikey

Her son’s life became her answered prayer. Today Mikey stands with his mother to tell this story in his own voice, and together they bring it to the screen as a testimony of what faith can carry a family through.

“I don’t have an ending. I have a Presence.”Gordana

Forbidden Prayers is based on Book of the Silenced, Gordana Smith’s Amazon bestselling, award-winning memoir.