A long view of short prayers
I found the book last fall. Covered in brown fabric, the title inside the front cover is written in Sharpie: Prayers and Ponderings. 9/79 — 12/88. Nine years.
The prayers and ponderings are mostly short. Just 1-2 pages per month to determine the focused prayers and goals for that specific season. November 1979’s page includes a new prayer focus at the bottom:
Baby
That’d be me. Though I was no bigger than a bean, my mom was already praying for me.
Just below that is prayer for Cambodians, Russian Christians, hostages, and President Carter.
Nothing too small, nothing too big. She prayed.
And while there are many jotted notes here and there (PTL!, better :), promising!, house sold!, recovering!) most of these short prayers have a long view of God’s promises.
I believe I’m still reaping the benefits now, more than 35 years later.
My discouragement in prayer is most often due to not seeing quick answers. Certainly I do see some immediate answers, which serves as a spiritual shot-in-the-arm for my faith. But there’s no getting around that a great portion of our prayers requires a great willingness to wait for the fulfillment.
We must have a long view of prayer.
What encourages me about my mom’s prayer journal, is her consistency month after month, year after year. Other than my wedding ring, I don’t think I’ve kept any item for 9 years, let alone a journal! She kept this same journal for nine years. In this way you could see gradual changes over the years.
And I love that her prayers are rather simple, short. To the point.
Jesus made it clear: Prayers aren’t answered due to length or clever word-choice.
Prayers are answered when they’re prayed in humility and faith. Humility bows us low and alines our will with His will, faith is what leads us to reach up and grasp His will. Like the woman who crept low through the crowd to grasp the hem of his garment, we lower ourselves and reach out.
We take hold of His promises, we take hold of His power, we take hold of His provision.
Everything we need is available to us, through prayer.
My mom’s prayer journal is a beautiful example to me of a commitment to a long view of short prayers. What simple habit can you embrace that will help you do the same?
A few moments ago my phone alarm went off and the screen read: “Pray with Mom.” Every day it goes off at the same time. Every day I call. She answers, still groggy from sleep. We pray. It’s brief–just 5 minutes, but together we agree with God and reach out together for His promises, His power, His provision.
Together we take a long view of short prayers.
And my hope is that these short morning prayers last a long time. Because just as it is with exercise, parenting, and basically anything else worth doing–consistency is key. You may not pray for an hour, but if you pray for 5 minutes every single day, something glorious will happen in the long haul.
{Thanks for reading.}
Polish the Silver {How to get it right}
I woke up early that morning (it was my birthday) and sneaked downstairs.
I was turning six and so excited for my tea party that day. Mom was still sleeping; she had been working hard to prepare for my party, and I wanted to do something special to help her. I looked up onto the high counter and saw the antique sterling silver tea set. That was it! I knew that one of the things she needed to do that morning was polish the silver–I could surprise her and do it for her! Yes, that was the perfect idea.
Now, Where’s the polish?
I vaguely remembered there being polish in the laundry room, so I dug around a little until I found it. It was thick and white, and oozed out of a special spongy tip on one end.
I set to work with all my heart. Rubbing carefully, I covered every surface of the sterling silver set. It was very white and very pasty. Hmm… It definitely looked different from what I’d imagined, but I was glad that I’d finished the job completely before mom woke up.
Just then she came in.
“Oh my!” she said. Her eyes were so big. (She was so surprised!) She smiled wide, really really wide, as she looked at the silver and at me.
“I polished the silver for you Mommy!” She looked at me with so much love in her eyes and this huge smile, I could tell she was so incredibly blessed by my hard work for her.
“Thank you,” she said, and meant it. “Thank you so much. Can I take a picture of you there with the silver?”
I beamed, and sat beside the white chalky silver for a photo.
Then she came next to me: “Now, shall we make it a little less white? We can work on it together.” Together we did a little more work, rinsing off all the white stuff, and wiping the silver clean. Then, still smiling, she pulled out another container from a tall shelf in the kitchen.
“This is the silver polish. Let’s use this one on the silver; ok? We can do it together.” I beamed, still so happy because she was so happy. I knew she was pleased.
It wasn’t until much later that I understood what all took place, when I looked back at the photo in an album and saw the caption:
“Kari loves to help. She polished the silver for me with shoe polish. :)”
Shoe polish.
Here’s what I love: When I think back on that memory, there is only joy. Sure, in a very real sense I did it wrong. I polished silver with shoe polish. But I don’t remember any shame. No anger, or irritation, or annoyance. I wasn’t belittled.
My mom saw my heart, and in my heart: I got it right.
Last week was a busy one for me, and one morning I came downstairs and discovered that Heidi had wanted to bless me. So she was unloading the dishwasher. She was doing the utensils, but since the counters are so high she was sorting out all the clean silverware … on the floor.
“Mommy! I’m helping you!” She beamed.
“Oh!” I smiled, a wide, wide smile. “Thank you. Thank you so much,” I said, and meant it. And while she wasn’t looking (she’s a photo-phobe), I snapped a pic because someday I want her to know that even when she got it wrong, her mama knew she got it right.
Oh friend, how often I have feared stepping out in faith to serve my God, because I was so afraid I wouldn’t get it right? How often I have feared the failure, or the looking foolish. But there is so much grace and freedom in the Kingdom. Our Father sees our hearts, when we earnestly and honestly work to love and serve Him from a heart of humble childlike faith.
Even when we get it wrong, He sees we got it right.
{May this freedom rule your hearts this week. No fear! Polish the silver! With love…thanks for reading.}
How to have the best Mother’s Day…
“The only mothers it is safe to forget on Mother’s Day are the good ones.”
~
Ha! Isn’t that the truth? Jeff and I are so blessed to both have “good ones” in the mom department, but isn’t it true in all areas that there are those in your life who are “safe” to forget and those who are not? For those who are not, there is an understood expectation in that relationship that you better do xyz on such-and-such day or so-and-so will be sorely disappointed. And then how do you wind up feeling?
Exhausted.
Oh my. I always want to be a person who is “safe to forget”!
Last night I sat in the old cream rocking chair in the kids’ room. Both kids had asked to be rocked, and yes! was my answer to both. So they filled up my lap, spilling over, arms wrapped around each other and faces nuzzled into my neck. I rocked, kissing the tops of their heads, unable to speak, not wanting to move, knowing this moment would last only moments. I closed my eyes and knew:
These are my Mother’s Day gifts.
The term “mother’s day gift” is redundant. Who needs a gift when one is a mother?
The gifts are already given.
They have pulses and eyelashes and puppy-dog breath. They are exhilarating and exhausting and infuriating and intoxicating. They are gifts. It’s wonderful if one of them gives you a gift tomorrow, but the gift has already been given.
That’s what makes us “safe to forget.”
Some of us, myself at times, forget that a zillion beautiful gifts have already been given. When we forget, we expect everyone else to give them to us. We might not expect a gift wrapped in paper or bow, but we expect a creative day or a special surprise or just the right words or someone to read our minds and give us what we want and do not say. And then at the end of the day you know how we feel?
Exhausted. (And so does everyone else.)
What if, instead, we realized each day that the gifts are already given. On mother’s day we have the gifts we hold upon our laps (or used to!). On a birthday we have the gift of LIFE, of breath, of being born and still being alive. On an anniversary we have a marriage–aglorious picture of divine love–no matter how imperfect it is. On Christmas we have God with us!! Who needs anything else? On Valentine’s Day we have the Lover of our Souls. On Easter we have a risen Lord.
Every holiday celebrates a gift that is already given.
And if we spent our precious time celebrating these already-gifts, I wonder what the result might be …
We might become safe to forget.
We might even forget about ourselves.
Oh blessed state, there is no joy like that.
{Happy Mother’s Day. Thanks for reading.}
How the presence of danger defines love…
I have a friend who had something horrible happen to her last year:
In the middle of the night, while she was peacefully sound asleep, a man broke into her house, busting down her door, stole into her room, dragged her out of her bed and into a vehicle and drove off.
Isn’t that awful? Trespassing! How horrible. How rude.
How loving.
How heroic.
How Christlike.
See, there’s one detail that change things dramatically.
Her house was on fire.
She was indeed peacefully sound asleep, completely oblivious. She was incoherent from smoke-inhalation and no idea that flames were engulfing her, floors were collapsing, things were exploding, and that she was moments away from death and she had no idea.
But there was this man. A hero. A firefighter who responded to the call and didn’t consider his own life dear to him but risked his own safety and well-being in order to bust down the door, plunge into the blinding smoke and flames, and rescue an unconscious woman from her bed. He dragged her out, put her in an ambulance, and away she went. She was in a coma for a long time. They didn’t know if she’d make it. By the grace of God, she survived. She’s a mama, about my age. Every day is a gift for her now, because someone recognized the danger, valued her life, and did the loving thing.
That detail about the fire changes everything, yes?
What is the “loving thing to do” depends heavily on the absence or presence of danger.
As my husband always says, the key to humble, Christlike rebuke or confrontation is helping people understand,
“You’re not in trouble, you’re in danger.”
Sin leads to death. Always. Destruction. Regret. Loss.
It is never loving to leave someone alone to die in a burning house.
So of course, the question is, How do we define danger? Who gets to decide when that person’s in danger or not? Who determines the degree of danger? A house-fire is rather obvious, but we certainly shouldn’t break into someone’s house and drag them into the street just because they’re smoking a cigarette in bed. Right? One could argue that that’s dangerous as well. Who decides?
Only the One who created us. Only the one who sees the end from the beginning. Only the one who knows the number of hairs on our heads, grains of sand on the shore, the ones who knit us together in our mother’s womb, who is alone wise. The only One who defines love.
We just finished studying 1 Corinthians as a church, and we ladies are now studying 2 Corinthians. It’s powerful to study them back-to-back, really helping us understand the progression of the story. In 1 Corinthians 5, there were some people who were in danger. Big danger. And all the people around them didn’t go into the burning building to rescue them. They didn’t think that was loving. It seemed rude. Judgmental. So they just stood around outside “accepting” the people’s decisions. In fact, they boasted about their non-judgmental attitudes! But Paul is livid. Why?
Because they weren’t rescuing people from danger. Sure, the steps he suggests taking are extreme. Basically like busting down the door on someone’s house and dragging them out of their beds. Crazy stuff. But later, in 2 Corinthians 7:8-13, we hear the beautiful result, that even though it was ugly at first, every though it was hard, even though there was grieving and hurt and anger and difficulty, that godly grieving brought repentance (turning from sin) which brought …
LIFE.
Rescued from death.
There was anguish. But some precious souls were saved from the fire because someone was willing to look rude and bust down the door of their life and drag them away from danger.
The truth is, we were all asleep in the burning house (Rom 3:23) but Christ made a way of escape by His blood, and now calls us to be His ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:18-21), his firemen. Sure, at times our jobs are mundane, we’re cleaning our gear or washing the truck. But other times we’re called on to do something seemingly rude, something scary that might be misinterpreted, something that makes us scared out of our mind, because the presence of danger defines love.
My friend is eternally grateful that a rude guy busted down her door and dragged her out of her house.
Thanks for reading.