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All in Prayer
he day we pulled up into our driveway with them -- into the home that had been full of empty bedrooms for years while we waited for them -- we sat with the keys in the ignition while they, buckled into boosters in the back, slept off days of sleepless travel and we sighed.
Done.
We’d finished the hardest part, hadn't we? They were … home.
If I knew that slowing down to say hello to a fellow mom could land me in such a pool of mommy guilt, I would have kept on going. She started off the conversation with a rather innocent question, but before I knew what happening, one of my comments opened up a door to an accusation I never saw coming . . . and that triggered an onslaught of mommy guilt. I nodded along with a smile on my face, but but on the inside, I was on the brink of tears and feeling like a failure as a mom.
I pressed on with the details of the evening, feeling icky and wishing I could go home. All I wanted to do was talk to my husband, and yet looking back, I’m so glad that was not an option. Instead, I ended up emptying my heart before the Lord each time the emotions rose up inside of me.
I'd like to think I'm an expert pray-er. I can clearly see how my prayers changed things. For example, I have three little kids—not birthed from me—running around my house who are examples of that. Yet the way that my prayers changed the future is different than you think.
God is not a genie in a bottle. My prayers weren't effective because I figured out the right words to make God do what I want to do. I used to think that. As a young Christian I'd try all sorts of things:
I wouldn't admit it out loud, but I believed deep down if I said the right things, at the right time, in the right way, that God could be swayed.
I know most of us here are Christian moms but we want the same things as every other mom right? Every mom wants to keep her kids safe, help them grow up healthy and strong, protect them from monsters and let them believe they’re super heroes, agreed?
All mothers can pretty much agree on these points but as moms following God, we have different standards and we see a bigger picture. We see beyond keeping our children safe to making them holy vessels fit for the Master’s use. We see far past our children’s temporal lives and gaze into their eternal futures.
If you’ve ever seen the first Hobbit movie, you might remember this line:
Tucked away in my journal is a little list that I find myself returning to often lately. At some point I went through the New Testament of my Bible and jotted down all the times that someone says “and I pray that…” You see, my prayer life isn’t always very rich or powerful or consistent. More often than I care to admit, much of my prayer life is me throwing up quick requests for God to bless my plans as I go about life. So I wanted to comb through the Bible and see what sorts of things Jesus’ earliest followers prayed about.
Two of my favorites are in the book of Ephesians. Ephesians is a powerful letter from the apostle Paul to the newish Christians who lived in Ephesus during the first century. He had poured his heart and soul into the early formation of the church at Ephesus and obviously had some important things he wanted to share with them.
"I'm tired of being afraid. I'm wondering how I got this way. I'm trying to remember what life was like before. Panic moved in without even knocking on the door. Have mercy on me. I'm not who I used to be. Have mercy on me. Jesus, please..." Have Mercy on Me lyrics, -JJ Heller
I remember so clearly, as though it was only yesterday and not nearly three years in my past, those overwhelming feelings of panic that would run through my veins every minute of every day and night for what seemed to be months on end.
I can close my eyes and instantly recall the constant unrest that would swirl around within my mind, and the tears...the most sincere and heartfelt tears I think I may have ever cried in my whole life, that would fall day after day after day. Night after night after night.
