ask anyway
In our many hours of learning, we learn how to pray.
I pass out empty index cards because my children, who find it hard to function without discernment of the edges, need discrete lines, spaces they can see in which to realize and organize real hopes into real petitions. The moments to consider, to plan, also make a discernible difference, especially when hurdling dyspraxia. Adam lifts his pencil, bends over the blankness with purpose, and begins to write.
Dear God,
He bites his lip lightly as he carefully forms the letters. He knows what he wants to ask; I can see that in the set of his shoulders. He does not glance up at me, does not seek my face with questioning eyes.
Finally, Adam sets aside the pencil and sits back, relaxed, unburdened. I can’t help but glance at the card in front of him, at the careful graphite letters just above the place where his hand still rests. I remember when he could not transpose his thoughts into words at all.
Thank you I went to Grandma and Papa’s house. Thank you I go on Saturday, June 13th.
I smile at the date, which Adam has chosen on his own. He has even written of the place where we usually meet my parents halfway for Summer weeks the kids spend there without us. I smile at the mixed tenses, at the accuracy with which he spreads gratitude over past and present and future. I smile because Adam has been specific and honest; he has taken the risk that the answer to his prayer might be no, though he’s written it as if it’s already so. And then I remember, faith is being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see.
Riley glances away from her own writing, hard-pressed and so repetitively inscribed as to dent the paper, as to need padding to protect the table, and flicks her gaze over Adam’s finished expression. She looks at me, incredulous. “Mom, look: Adam wrote I went; he wrote I go. He thinks we’re going to Grandma and Papa’s house on June 13th.” She is rarely critical, except of her brother, and her personality over-bends toward correctness–her own, hence the repetitive writing, the scars on the paper, and also everyone else’s.
“This is a prayer, Riley. Adam’s asking after what he hopes. And God understands, no matter how it’s written.” I mean the words as her freedom, knowing she needs no encouragement to attend to the beam in her own eye. She perseverates on that plank so hard it leaves marks. I gesture back toward her paper, the unfinished sentences of her own prayer.
And of course, she’s right; I can’t imagine how we’ll travel that early. Adam doesn’t understand that this year, those weeks and weeks he usually spends with my mom and dad will be whittled down to one. He has not known, as I have, that eventually my parents would not have the energy to be hosts without us. We have begun to discuss this out loud, have begun repeating the reality of changes so that he can adjust his expectations. Eventually, Adam will accept the situation. Even so, I believe and have affirmed for him that impossible things belong to God, that prayer is the right place for even his most illogical and grandiose petitions, that he should still pray, even if it seems likely that the answer will be no. Conversation involves so much more than requests and the responses to them, and prayer is a conversation with our all-powerful, all-knowing, recklessly loving Father. A child can tell a parent he wants to stand on the moon, and the telling matters, maybe even more than whether or not he becomes an astronaut.
Finally, Riley loosens her white-knuckled grip on her pencil, and Riley and Adam each, in their own words, call us to the time of prayer, and we bow our heads. I release a sigh I didn’t know I held, and with it my desperate petition for more of God. Slowly, Adam begins reading his prayer, articulating in deep seriousness his gratitude, his heartfelt hope. I feel Riley’s pause, feel her lift her head as he speaks the words, feel her eyes pop open to look at him. “I don’t know, Adam,” she says finally, her voice breaking into our prayers, strident with rightness. “I don’t know if we can go to Grandma and Papa’s that day. We’ll see. We’ll see.”
I flatten a hand against my face, hiding my smile, which Riley, wide-eyed as she is, will only see and question. I know she believes this “reality check” to be a help to her brother. Her words–this interruption of his faith–form a blunt shield against disappointment. She’s thinking, That one’s gonna be a ‘no’, buddy. I think of the times those words have stung me–I just don’t want you to be disappointed, and then I wonder how many times I’ve tried to be a shield myself when someone’s already shielded by God, when that faith itself is a shield powerful enough to extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one; when the only good ‘no’ is a ‘no’ from God, a ‘no’ sheltered by God. I smile because Riley only says out loud what I have thought before myself but would never have the courage to say out loud, when I’ve heard someone ask big and thought they were asking too much, thought their specificity too big a risk. I’ve wanted to counsel faith-full people on safer prayers. And right now, in the place of prayer, I wonder if I have not only failed to convey that God can do impossible things, but if I have sometimes failed to believe it myself.
No matter how things look to us, no matter what we think we know, God always has the final say.
The list grows long: we think someone likely won’t get well; that injustice probably won’t find a resolution; that there’s no chance of a better candidate; that terrorists will never stop taking lives; that our children likely won’t ever overcome their challenges; that there’s no better job; that relationships can’t really heal; that our hope can’t touch reality. But I think now of the early church, of James killed and Peter in prison, how they asked anyway, not really expecting Peter would ever be free. I think of Paul, how before Jesus called him, he went around destroying the church. I think of three days of darkness and loss before the resurrection. I think of a time when I hardly believed my son would speak, much less write down his deepest hopes and pray them out loud.
Oh, thank God His answers don’t depend on our lack of doubt.
Lately, I’ve begun to confess my doubts as I pray, in the same breath I use to ask for more faith. I’m Peter telling the Lord, “All night I’ve fished and caught nothing, but because you say so, Lord, I’ll cast the net again.” In other words, I’ll ask anyway. Because He’s King, no matter what I think I know, I keep coming back.
Only God has no limits.
“Riley,” I whisper gently, “if you’re concerned for Adam, pray.”
Deliberately I bow my head lower, pressing my eyes closed so she can see, so she’ll remember it’s a vertical conversation. Finally, she lets it go, remembering her own prayer, which is thank you and thank you and thank you again for grace upon more and more grace.
