My Mother Prayer
A few years ago I was going through a rough time. We had our first child and had tried for a 2nd and while we got pregnant right away it turned out to be a tubal pregnancy which led to lots of pain and later a large ovarian cyst. I was warned to stay off my feet because it was big enough they were afraid a rupture would destroy that ovary. After several months of dealing with that I started having new pains and it turned out my gallbladder was full of stones. We also had a kidney scare in that time but it turns out my kidney is just oddly shaped and was actually ok. (If only we could have known that without all the extra testing!) After fighting to keep my gallbladder by trying everything I could get my hands on to break up the stones, I eventually had to give in and have yet another surgery to have it removed.
The surgery went as well as could be expected but the recovery was rough and it took me a lot longer to feel better than I had been led to believe. My digestion took almost 2 years to regulate and learn how to process food without a gallbladder and I just saw no end in sight for my health. Three months later I got Bell’s Palsy and couldn’t use half of my face for a while. That did eventually clear up with minimal permanent damage, but it was scary for that season because I had no guarantees of a full recovery.
This whole time I was just dying to have another kid. I had wanted to have my kids close together for many reasons and I was devastated not only to not be having babies but to be so sick for over a year as we fought one attack after another.
During this time I saw many friends get pregnant and have babies. I heard of people getting pregnant by accident or had friends have 1 or even 2 kids in the time-span it took for me to go through all of this. I questioned why God gave my such a desire for a baby when clearly that wasn’t a possibility at this point!
In Feb of 2016 I was reading during my quiet time and I came across John 17. Having grown up in church my whole life and having heard every verse in all the most popular versions of the Bible I have clung to The Message in recent years. It is a breath of fresh air to me to read new takes on verses I’ve had memorized since I was 10. I know not everyone loves The Message, but I find it to be fresh and new and helps me find the spark I need to once again find excitement in my quiet times when I had started to struggle with everything being all too familiar. I now use a parallel NIV and Message Bible which provides me the paraphrased Message along-side a more literal translation for deeper study.
As I read through John 17 in The Message version it struck a chord. Don’t you love how you can read passages in different times of life and they can mean completely different things to you depending on your season of life?
John 17:6-19 records Jesus’ prayer for His disciples. He talks about how He had spelled out God’s character in detail to the men and women around Him, how He shepherded them and trusted that they would continue His work in the world even after He would soon leave them. As I read this I remembered some of the stuff I learned while reading A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23. How loving and caring a shepherd is, how loving and caring our Lord is to take such gentle care of us this way, and the parallels between parenting and shepherding. As I read over this passage a few more times I felt the Lord tell me that this was to be my prayer. In that moment, He promised me more children; they would come. This was my promise and I needed to pray this over them, all of them -- the born and the unborn. I took the verses and dissected them and created an adapted version for me to pray daily.
I wanted to share this with you, dear Mommas. This prayer is one that has helped me remember my role in their lives; remember I am simply a shepherd and these blessings that I call children are indeed His.
My Mother Prayer
I spelled out Your character in detail to the ones You gave me.
They were Yours in the first place, then You gave them to me.
They know now, beyond the shadow of a doubt,
That everything I have and am came from You.
The Message You gave me, I gave to them,
For I will not always be around in this world,
But they’ll continue in the world, a light for You.
Holy Father, guard them as they pursue this life
That You conferred as a gift through me.
And may not one of them get away.
Amen
The fun part of this story is that one week later I found out I was pregnant! And while I’d love to say the pregnancy was happy and great and care-free I would be lying -- there were a lot of ups and downs with that pregnancy due to all of my health issues and my body still recovering from so much. But my little man showed up 9 months later and now we’re due any day with baby #3. God is so good and He knew what He was doing all along! It wasn’t my timetable. It wasn’t my plan. I would happily have those 18 months of health issues, struggles, and pain taken away and erased, but I can’t and I have to believe that God will use even those to His glory. Our God is not a wasteful God; He is a God of redemption and healing and love. So while I’ll never understand why things happened the way they do, every time I pray my Mother Prayer I remember His promise to me and all the promises He makes to all of His children and remember that suffering, while a part of life, is seasonal. There is always hope because He is our Father.
If you’re going through something hard, something you don’t understand, something that seems so out-of-place and awful, reach out. Reach out to God, He loves you and He is there. Reach out to your community, your church, your family, your friends, whoever is in your tribe. And I would love to pray for you as well. If there’s a need, a concern, a scare… Let me stand with you and support you.
Stay strong Mommas! What we do isn’t easy and life never fails to make everything so much harder. But we can do this together. We can do this because God is with us and will give us the strength to face each day and whatever it may bring; even if it feels like you’re being crushed from every side. 🖤
The surgery went as well as could be expected but the recovery was rough and it took me a lot longer to feel better than I had been led to believe. My digestion took almost 2 years to regulate and learn how to process food without a gallbladder and I just saw no end in sight for my health. Three months later I got Bell’s Palsy and couldn’t use half of my face for a while. That did eventually clear up with minimal permanent damage, but it was scary for that season because I had no guarantees of a full recovery.
This whole time I was just dying to have another kid. I had wanted to have my kids close together for many reasons and I was devastated not only to not be having babies but to be so sick for over a year as we fought one attack after another.
During this time I saw many friends get pregnant and have babies. I heard of people getting pregnant by accident or had friends have 1 or even 2 kids in the time-span it took for me to go through all of this. I questioned why God gave my such a desire for a baby when clearly that wasn’t a possibility at this point!
In Feb of 2016 I was reading during my quiet time and I came across John 17. Having grown up in church my whole life and having heard every verse in all the most popular versions of the Bible I have clung to The Message in recent years. It is a breath of fresh air to me to read new takes on verses I’ve had memorized since I was 10. I know not everyone loves The Message, but I find it to be fresh and new and helps me find the spark I need to once again find excitement in my quiet times when I had started to struggle with everything being all too familiar. I now use a parallel NIV and Message Bible which provides me the paraphrased Message along-side a more literal translation for deeper study.
As I read through John 17 in The Message version it struck a chord. Don’t you love how you can read passages in different times of life and they can mean completely different things to you depending on your season of life?
John 17:6-19 records Jesus’ prayer for His disciples. He talks about how He had spelled out God’s character in detail to the men and women around Him, how He shepherded them and trusted that they would continue His work in the world even after He would soon leave them. As I read this I remembered some of the stuff I learned while reading A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23. How loving and caring a shepherd is, how loving and caring our Lord is to take such gentle care of us this way, and the parallels between parenting and shepherding. As I read over this passage a few more times I felt the Lord tell me that this was to be my prayer. In that moment, He promised me more children; they would come. This was my promise and I needed to pray this over them, all of them -- the born and the unborn. I took the verses and dissected them and created an adapted version for me to pray daily.
I wanted to share this with you, dear Mommas. This prayer is one that has helped me remember my role in their lives; remember I am simply a shepherd and these blessings that I call children are indeed His.
My Mother Prayer
I spelled out Your character in detail to the ones You gave me.
They were Yours in the first place, then You gave them to me.
They know now, beyond the shadow of a doubt,
That everything I have and am came from You.
The Message You gave me, I gave to them,
For I will not always be around in this world,
But they’ll continue in the world, a light for You.
Holy Father, guard them as they pursue this life
That You conferred as a gift through me.
And may not one of them get away.
Amen
The fun part of this story is that one week later I found out I was pregnant! And while I’d love to say the pregnancy was happy and great and care-free I would be lying -- there were a lot of ups and downs with that pregnancy due to all of my health issues and my body still recovering from so much. But my little man showed up 9 months later and now we’re due any day with baby #3. God is so good and He knew what He was doing all along! It wasn’t my timetable. It wasn’t my plan. I would happily have those 18 months of health issues, struggles, and pain taken away and erased, but I can’t and I have to believe that God will use even those to His glory. Our God is not a wasteful God; He is a God of redemption and healing and love. So while I’ll never understand why things happened the way they do, every time I pray my Mother Prayer I remember His promise to me and all the promises He makes to all of His children and remember that suffering, while a part of life, is seasonal. There is always hope because He is our Father.
If you’re going through something hard, something you don’t understand, something that seems so out-of-place and awful, reach out. Reach out to God, He loves you and He is there. Reach out to your community, your church, your family, your friends, whoever is in your tribe. And I would love to pray for you as well. If there’s a need, a concern, a scare… Let me stand with you and support you.
Stay strong Mommas! What we do isn’t easy and life never fails to make everything so much harder. But we can do this together. We can do this because God is with us and will give us the strength to face each day and whatever it may bring; even if it feels like you’re being crushed from every side. 🖤
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