I stood slowly after the closing prayer. The long sit on hard wooden pews had stiffened my muscles. I rubbed my back as I slid sideways into the aisle. My mother-in-law motioned me to stay put.
“I’ll go get the kids.”
As I gathered up Bibles, papers, and bags, an older lady approached. “Joy, I just love to watch Elli while you and Scott sing. It makes her so happy.”
I never know what to say in situations like these, so I just smiled at her. Elli’s face shone and the joy in her soul exploded from her entire body when she heard music she loved.
She continued. “I pray every day for Elli to be healed.”
My smile froze. Elli was five years old. She had a permanent brain injury from lack of oxygen. Her heart hadn’t formed right. How could she be healed of that? These weren’t ongoing processes that could stop or reverse. It simply was.
“Oh! Well, thank you,” I managed. I knew her intention was good.
As we rolled Elli down the wheelchair ramp and into the sunny parking lot, the second-guessing started. Mother-guilt, my old faithful companion, back again. Had I failed her? Was my faith weak? Should I be asking God to heal her?
Then the thought (maybe it was from the Holy Spirit?). I need to accept our circumstances as they are today. Praying for healing would feed my discontent, my anger, my resentment, and my clamor for relief from the suffering.
I realized that it’s ok to stop praying for something. I hadn’t stopped praying altogether. I asked God for help to be a good mother to a child who couldn’t talk to me, feed herself, or walk. I asked for wisdom for the doctors treating her. I asked for help not to waste my scant energy on worthless activities like worry.
That didn’t mean it was wrong for others to pray for different things, like for Elli to be healed. I could thank this dear lady for her prayers and genuinely appreciate them as a gift of love from her to us. But it was no reflection on me, my effectiveness as a mother, or my faith in God, that I could not join her in that prayer.
“We do not know the precise nature of the thorn in the flesh with which the apostle Paul wrestled–whether it was a physical malady or some other problem. In this particular case, Paul tells us that he prayed three times that his thorn in the flesh would be taken away. And then he stopped praying for the thorn’s removal, but this was because he sensed God telling him that he would have to endure the thorn (2 Cor. 12:7-10). Paul had to be ready for a different kind of perseverance, and to be willing to persist in different prayers from those for healing. His calling was to pray for grace to endure the thorn, to pray for God’s strength to sustain him in his ongoing weakness.”
Have you ever stopped praying for something? Why or why not?
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Actively praying about things is a pretty quick ticket to a downward spiral for me. It makes me feel like Charlie Brown running at the football. I have a candle and a “prayer box”. I write things down and put them in the box. That’s as close as I get to prayer.
oh, how i’ve had this same conversation with myself about what to pray for, what not to pray for. and received the same sentiments from beautiful people telling me that they’re praying for my healing. which i have deeply, deeply appreciated.
but i have been called to a different priority in my prayers for myself. (my family’s health, on the other hand, now that’s a more painful one for me to shift. so i still wrestle in those prayers. but i know that God doesn’t mind the wrestling. He’d rather me come to Him wrestling than not at all.)
forgive me if i’ve already shared this quote, but it is one that spoke to me ever so deeply about a year ago when i was in the very thick of my health crisis . . .
“every cross is a message from God and intended to do us good in the end. trials are intended to make us think, to wean us from the world, to send us to the Bible, to drive us to our knees.
health is a good thing, but sickness is far better if it leads us to God.
prosperity is a great mercy, but adversity is a greater one if it brings us to Christ.”
- j.c. ryle
health is a good thing, but sickness is far better if it leads us to God . . . THAT! THAT is my prayer.
just give me Jesus in all the pain. just give me Jesus.
tanya@truthinweakness recently posted..silent soul embrace
Joy, this post really spoke to me. First of all, this does NOT mean you are a bad mother or terrible Christian! Quite the opposite!
I have stopped praying for something in the past. I had some very difficult health problems where I kept praying for God’s miraculous healing. And I still do believe miraculous healing is possible. But I was basically just praying for God to magically take my problems away and then becoming very bitter and angry when He did not. He led me to two passages: Jesus praying in the garden for God to remove the cross and the passage in Hebrews where it says God heard Jesus when he prayed in the garden. The interesting thing about those passages is that of course God said “No” to Jesus’ request. And Hebrews says that Jesus “learned obedience through what he suffered.” What made a huge difference to me is that Hebrews says Jesus’ prayer WAS HEARD. I love that! God was hearing me. But He was saying “no.” And Jesus, when he prayed, wasn’t demanding of God. He added that all-important line, “Not my will but yours be done.” And if Jesus had to learn obedience from what he suffered, then how much more do I have to learn!
Now I think of prayer not as demands but simply talking to God, as I would in any close relationship. I yell at him, I vent, I tell Him I love Him, I share my joys, I share my fears, I ask Him to speak to me. He can take it all. He hears me. And He has the right to answer how He will.
“I realized that it’s ok to stop praying for something. I hadn’t stopped praying altogether. I asked God for help to be a good mother to a child who couldn’t talk to me, feed herself, or walk. I asked for wisdom for the doctors treating her. I asked for help not to waste my scant energy on worthless activities like worry.”
Thank you for sharing this today!
its an important perspective to share. to pray for more endurance and acceptance and strength.. rather than for what we wish God would heal. Understanding that it might not be what he wants. its not the same as NOT believing he would heal, or thinking its worthless to pray. its a shift in focus. my opinion anyway, and im glad you published these thoughts. *HUG*
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Wow… this is a very powerful post! I just want to affirm you in this, because I had a similar revelation just last week. I spend time every day going through my iPad prayer app praying for folks with needs. One person I was praying for was a gal at our church who, like your daughter, is unable to speak, walk and feed herself. She is a remarkable Christian, using technology to communicate the Gospel and witness. However, as I was praying for her healing because that is what many other people had been doing… I received a word from the Lord He wasn’t going to heal her, because she was doing just what she was supposed to be doing for His glory as a living testimony.
I struggled with this for a few days wondering if it really was legitimate for me to stop praying for her healing. God confirmed this in my heart, and now I pray for all of the remarkable things she is doing right where she is.
Great post and I am excited to be following your blog!
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I once asked a fellow teacher, a nun, if we should bother asking for particular things in prayer, or just ask for the ability to accept with grace what he has planned for us. She told me she always did both. Thank you for writing this beautiful piece and for adding another book to my wishlist.
This is beautiful and hard to do – I often struggle with letting go of some prayers, and putting down the clamoring voices that still want God to bring this or that into my life, or to heal someone I love, or to change something. And I think it is wisdom and grace to put down some of those voices. Thank you for sharing this with us.
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Oh, thank you for these words. For the honesty. For the heart.
I think we often pretend to understand more about prayer than we do. It is amazing, but it is also mysterious. It is sometimes hard to know what we should pray for.
People often quote Romans 8:28 when people are going through difficult times, but I think the real word for those in pain is a few verses earlier, in Romans 8:26 “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 through wordless groans.”
We don’t know. We don’t know how to find God in difficult times. We don’t know how to pray. We search for God’s will. But in the midst of that, the Spirit is interceding for us, hearing our heart and opening it up to God.
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A couple of weeks ago I came to a similar thought. My mother and my mother-in-law both are battling chronic autoimmune diseases. My mother has been sick since I was 10 and now 28 years later the side effects of all the surgeries and treatments have wreaked havoc on her body. She is 57 years old and probably has a few more years but over the past few weeks I’ve come to understand a statement she made about her own mother’s battle with cancer. She said she came to the point where she just prayed that her mom would have peace and not hurt anymore however God needed to accomplish that. I didn’t realize it until I read this post but have been praying over the past few weeks that God would just ease their pain instead of healing them. That whenever the time comes we will have the wisdom to know whether or not extraordinary measures are the right choice.
Thank you for sharing this beautiful post Joy.
I have 2 kids with special needs and I am a pastor’s wife so many times people have said this to me, or asked me about it. Like you, I just smile. I do not pray for healing, mainly because I do not believe this to be God’s plan, He has done more through my girls because of their disabilities than anything else in my life.
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I understand this so well as a mother. A child with special needs enters your life the prayers go up for healing at first. For God to some one ~ just take this away. Then, God allows us to understand that this is part of His plan. That these struggles that you and your child will go through are not a mistake. Others looking at you may not ‘get it.’ I didn’t understand before my son. Our prayers as a mother continue but they are not to change the child God has created, but to help others (doctors, peers, family) to accept and love our child as they are. (( Hugs )) Jen
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Great post Joy. I think it’s important for us to look at this verse, because Paul was NOT healed this side of heaven…and many of us aren’t. I think there is definitely a time when we can stop asking. It doesn’t mean we set aside our belief in the God who can…but that we’re trusting that His plan for us & trying our best to walk well there.
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Excellent post, Joy. We have a son who has been in and out of prison for 25 years. The prayers have been intense (with many guilty accusations about “how could we let him do these things”), but ultimately we come back to entrusting him to God, and wait upon Him, even if it doesn’t make worldly sense.
Nancy Guthrie went through that process as she and her husband had two children die at six months (three years apart). The many comments to them were often directed like those noted “Praying for healing,” which became short-sighted. Nancy put away all books and read the bible only. She learned the heart of God was bigger and wiser than humans. As I spoke with her 15 months ago, she basically said: (paraphrased) “My two children are experiencing the ultimate joys of heaven? Would healing have given them more?”
Thank you.
I am doing an eight week study on prayer over at my blog and one of the things I disclose in the first session is that God convicted me, in a very deep and personal prayer moment, that I was praying for the wrong thing. I think the beautiful thing about prayer is that it brings us closer to God and there our hearts become more like His and so do our desires. We go from asking for something to surrender to whatever it is He wills for our lives.
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Well said Joy. But you didn’t stop praying at all
you just stopped praying that Elli would be healed – that’s different.
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