Wherein My Unbelief Gets A Small Help

It's Monday night. Long day, for everyone, everywhere. I was telling a friend today that nurses are largely a group of unhappy people. Way over half the people I work with every day are unhappy...every day. It's strange and difficult to be working around that many unhappy people, and the challenge is to still find ways to reach out when I'm not all that happy myself.

Tonight Harper had another freak-out night terror. I tried for thirty minutes to get her to calm down, and I used all the tricks in my mommy bag. No go. Thirty minutes later she's still screaming and now screaming for Daddy. Sigh. Fine, Micah, let's see what you've got.

Ten minutes later the house is an oasis of calm. So quiet you could feel the Xanax kicking in and hear the angels faintly humming. "Okay- what did you do?" Micah tells me that he did all the same things I did. Sigh. But then he says, "Sometimes when she's having a really bad night...I pray with her."
What?
What?!

Okay- so I have a difficult time with prayer. But so does Micah. Lately we approach the christian faith in a more practical, social way. We work for the Kingdom. We care for the poor and the earth, forgive enemies, blah blah blah. So I was mystified to hear that he had been praying with our child behind my back. ;)

"For how long? What do you say when you pray with her? Does she like it? What have you told her about God? How much do you think she understands?"

She's only two. I didn't know we'd started! Having not wanted to tell her that God is a Big Man in the Sky, and after Christmas and playing with "baby Jesus" figurines, I haven't said much. Micah tells me that Harper likes to pray, that he prays all the same things I would, that she probably doesn't understand it but it seems to soothe her, that she loves to say "amen", and that for now, she thinks Jesus lives at church.

Then I'm all teary-eyed, thinking about him praying in there with her, and not telling me because he didn't want to seem overly spiritual or braggy. Then I'm all, "You've got to fill me in on this stuff! I want to watch you do the spiritual formation stuff, even though I have no idea how!"

Then he's all back-tracking, "Oh, I don't know about prayer. But, hey, it's calming. I don't know what's really happening there. Maybe it's just the neurological effect of meditation on the brain..."

Whatever, you big goofy prayer warrior. I don't buy the cynical act, not tonight. You're a big prayer softie, and I'm on to you.

So Micah wins the parent award again, but at least I get to watch him work.

Comments

[kinsey charles]

"Whatever, you big goofy prayer warrior." Hahaha.

[Tim Sean]

I have said many times in the last ten years that I have a general sense of what it is God expects from us (justice, mercy) but I have no earthly idea what I am supposed to expect from God. That leaves my prayers pretty choppy...

[Kristen]

"I have no earthly idea what I am supposed to expect from God."

I like that. That's a perfect way to articulate what I feel.