filling those golden bowls
I pray with Riley at night.
After she brushes her teeth, she comes to get me, shows up beside my bed like she used to as a child, and I lay aside my book and pull my body back out of bed and slow step my way across the hall to her room. Sometimes I groan, not out loud but deep inside my heart, wondering where to find the energy for one more interaction, and in those moments, I silently pray, LORD, help, remembering how, as a much younger girl, I also used to walk into my mom’s room at night and find her sitting against her pillows. I remember how she looked then, her salt-and-pepper hair, her readers perched on her nose, her Bible splayed open in her lap. I did not understand then that she had turned to God for what she needed to give to me.
When we walk into Riley’s room, I turn on the ceiling fan at the switch, because I know Riley likes to feel the soft, cool air moving across her cheeks while she sleeps. Then, I watch Riley come in behind me and double check that the fan is actually on, even though both of us can see the blades turning and feel the air tickling our arms and hear the dangling cord lightly tapping the metal casing that houses the motor.
She touches the switch twice, murmurs something like, “All-RIGHT, looking good,” and I lean against the doorjamb and watch and remind myself to stay silent, and I think, OCD isn’t logical. It isn’t.
Sometimes while I’m waiting, I ask God to show me all the things I do obsessively—and illogically— just to make sure I’m all–right, when I could, if I were really making sense, trust in what He’s already done for me.
After the fan ritual, Riley climbs into bed and embarks on a short dance involving her pillow, which she shifts back and forth across the top of the bed by degrees while making dramatic flourishes with her hand and rhythmically tapping the place where she will eventually lay her head. The dance ends when she finally feels comfortable that the pillow is resting in the exact right spot for sleep.
I watch about half of the pillow dance, and then I close my eyes and lean my head against the doorjamb, while still whispering in my mind, Not logical. Not, and then, I ask God to show me how, in my own life, I prioritize the placement of the pillow over the rest itself.
When at last Riley stills, I walk over and sit on the edge of her bed in the half moon of empty space between her bent elbows and knees, and, thinking about how it’s always in my stillness that I really begin to know, I begin to pray over my daughter.
Tonight, as we arrive at this moment, I remember again a conversation Riley and I had one day this week while on a walk in our neighborhood. After about half a block of silence, she caught up to walk beside me (usually, she and Adam follow me in a line, like little ducks) and asked, “Mom, do you pray that I will one day drive a car?”
The question had thrown me a moment, because I do pray about her dream to drive, but not with the present-perfect-continuous-tense kind of consistency I knew she meant by her question.
“I do pray about that,” I had said eventually, looking down at my feet, watching the sidewalk glisten in the sunlight. “Not every day, but I do.”
I had felt some conviction as I said this, because it forced me to acknowledge that while I have faith that God can change the multiple factors that prevent Riley from being able to drive, I don’t really have any expectation that He will. I’m a bit like the apostles in the book of Acts, praying with the church that Peter would be released from prison, while never actually expecting that he would be released. Fortunately for them then and for me now, God’s answers to prayer depend on His nature and His will rather than on our very limited human expectations.
As an exceptional needs mom, this has generally felt to me like a healthy way to prayerfully navigate my children’s chronic challenges. I have asked for contentment in circumstances as they are, making peace with the likelihood that our circumstances may never change. I have given thanks for Riley’s big vision for her own life, and I have encouraged Riley’s faith in what God can do and her prayers that He will, while reminding her that we still need to trust Him if he doesn’t.
She always succinctly agrees with what I say and then reminds me to keep praying.
“Does Dad pray about it?” She had continued that day, as we walked on, side-by-side.
“Yes, I’m sure he does.”
“Does Zoe?”
“I think so. You could ask her,” I offered, feeling more and more convicted as our conversation continued that I needed to do as Riley requested and persist in daily prayer over this myself.
After a while though, I get tired of repeating myself.
That day, I had thought about how Riley, when asked how we can pray for her, thoroughly repeats the same list of prayer requests every time, using the same words, and about how most of us who love her, even if we don’t actually pray about these things with a persistence to match, eventually begin to disregard her repetition in requesting.
We have short attention spans, and maybe we don’t believe God will say yes, so we pray a few times and give up when nothing changes.
That day on our walk, it had hit me with a force that could have knocked me over, the reality that, in this, I hadn’t actually followed the teachings of Christ with regard to prayer. Christ taught that we should always pray and not lose heart, and to illustrate this, he told a story about an obnoxiously, recklessly, ridiculously persistent widow who kept coming to an unrighteous judge over and over again with the same plea for justice. Her persistence, which would ultimately pay off, really made no sense. In fact, Jesus described her as being just plain annoying to the judge.
But prayer, I’m thinking as I begin to pray, represents the best possible opportunity to find comfort in repetition, because to pray is to lay my anxiety and confusion and limitations down over and over as I place my heart and our circumstances in God’s care. The point Christ made with His story was that if persistence would move an unrighteous judge to give justice, our repeated prayers will certainly move our good and gracious heavenly Father to show compassion for us. Even if God doesn’t say yes, His love extends repeatedly to cover over us and bring us peace. We give over our longings and our burdens and our cares to Him, and regardless of what happens with our circumstances, He holds us safe.
“It’s okay,” Riley has said to me repeatedly, about the driving and the car and the dream, “it will happen in God’s time.”
“Father, please heal Riley of her epilepsy,” I pray over her now. “We know you can. We trust you. Would you make a way for her to drive a car?”
Ever since that conversation on our walk, I have remembered, and I have repeated those words over her without fail, every night. I have stopped feeling like I need to say, “if it’s your will,” like I’m excusing God already, because God’s will is always what happens, and Riley has more understanding than I do about trusting in that.
In a recent sermon to our church, JD Greear drew our attention to some passages in the book of Revelation that speak of God gathering our prayers in golden bowls in heaven. “There are two things God collects,” he said in his message, “our tears and our prayers.” As I listened, I thought of all the tears Riley has cried over her dream to drive, and all the prayers we’ve prayed together. In Revelation 8, before the world is redeemed, scripture describes an angel offering all our gathered and collected prayers on the altar before God as fragrant incense.
I think of heavenly smoke rising, smelling holy-sweet, and I want to just keep filling those golden bowls to overflowing.
“LORD, you alone are able,” I pray now, laying one hand gently on Riley’s waist.
She gushes; I can feel her smile as she says right out loud, right to God along with me, just, “YES.”
