Discovering my Holy Grail

I believe that prayer works. I believe that prayer matters. I believe that God wouldn’t ask us in His word to pray if it wasn’t important. And yet, over the past few years, as I walked through a difficult season that lasted longer than I was comfortable with, I wrestled with prayer. His word promises that He hears us, but I didn’t feel heard. And quite honestly, I was tired. I was weary from praying and praying and praying and praying…with what felt like no results. For a period of time, I even stopped praying. I don’t think God was mad at me for that. I am confident that He knows my heart and knew that time of silence was what I needed before He blew a fresh wind of His spirit my way.

I recently went to see a movie with my family that reminded me of what I know, prayer matters. As I pondered what was now rolling around in my mind, I was prompted to look for an old journal that I had written in years ago because it had a few prayers I’d written for my children. A few prayers is what I thought I would find, but instead, as I blew off the dust, what I found instead was like the Holy Grail of a mother’s prayers for her children and husband. As I took a peek inside, what I found was whole sections–pages and pages full–of prayers based on scripture that I had written out for my children and husband. What I found was love woven in and out of the words on the inscribed pages. It was as if when I cracked open the cover, the Holy Spirit jumped out at me and said, “Welcome back. It’s time to get busy remembering and building on what you know to be the most loving and effective thing you can do for your family.”

As I’ve poured over these prayers, it occurred to me that maybe you might want to join me by taking scripture and weaving prayers for your children into His words. If you’re anything like me, you want to pray for your children and husband, but you don’t know where to start and you don’t have a lot of time. So let’s link arms and figure it out together. As I uncover prayers I’ve already written and create new ones as He leads, I’ll post them here. I am no professional pray-er, but I am confident of this: