My mom taught me to pray

My mom gave me something that I will always be grateful for. In fact, as a mother and a wife, I don’t think there is anything that she could have passed down to me that would be more important. She taught me the importance of prayer.

We had an interesting life when I grew up. We lived without electricity for awhile and the doors of our cars sometimes had to be held on by the passengers riding in them. I think those things may have been a reason that prayer was a very central part of our lives. Whether we were praying for silly things like that our car would make it to the next gas station without running out or more serious things like illness in the family, my mom taught us to pray.

When I was a teenager I probably caused her to take her prayer life up a notch. I was determined to live life the way I wanted and it came to the point where the only thing my mom could possibly do was pray. My mom was so faithful. She’d wake up in the middle of the night and pray. She prayed without ceasing. And I felt it. Not only did she intuitively know what I was up to most of the time I felt like I could not get away with anything. I’d be on my way to somewhere I shouldn’t have been heading and my car would break down…for no reason. So I’d have to call my parents and they’d come and pick me up. Francis Thompson wrote a poem called “The Hound of Heaven” and that would be the best way to describe how God was after me throughout my teenage years. I had plans for my life but God had something different planned.

Then just a few years ago when Emma was born some of you may remember that she was bleeding internally and had to be rushed down to Children’s Hospital. That was a scary and an amazing time for us. Her second night there they sent us home knowing that she was still bleeding from one of her organs and we felt so incredibly helpless. I think it was the first time that we really prayed together with faith that God knew what He was doing and He cared for our baby. And she was healed that night. We went back to the hospital the next day and her bleeding had stopped. Not only that but they did numerous tests on her and her organs were perfect, no tears, rips or scarring. We had plans for how her birth was going to go but God had something different planned; something better.

As mothers when our children are born we know that they are God’s children first and He loves them so much more than we are capable of. Unlike us who look at people through a cloud of fear, God sees them through perfect love, seeing who He created them to be. When we pray we are invited to see our children through His eyes and through that come to a deeper relationship with him as our Father.

Romans 8:26-27 says “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.