how you pray
“It’s Monday!” Riley says, with the day still so new that the morning light looks soft and tentative and the chill outside clouds the windows. My favorite backyard tree looks bony and bare, empty-handed and reaching like me, but Riley glows like a sun-drenched bloom, pink-cheeked from sleep, bright with anticipation.
I look up at her and smile, one finger resting on a question Jesus posed to His disciples when He was teaching them how to pray.
Which of you, if your child asks for a fish, will give them a snake instead? Or if they ask for an egg, will give them a scorpion?
Luke 11:11-12
I hold a coffee cup in my hands and feel a little wounded by the intrusion of responsibility, including Captain Obvious now standing beside my chair with her hands folded in front of her, waiting waiting waiting on I-don’t-know-what. Aware of my own ability to wound her heart, I sip my coffee and attempt to solve the puzzle silently while she sways back and forth like the clapper of a bell.
“If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children…” If even you can love her, I hear, and I nod, because I know how mixed-up I am about love.
Riley and I have already said all of the ritually required things involved in morning greetings. Riley has a script for good morning, like a memorized prayer; she says her part, I say mine. People with Autism often practice rigid routines as a way to fight anxiety, and this is one of hers. I go over it in my mind, wondering if I left something out–good morning; oh, good morning (with surprise); how are you; I’m good, thanks, how are you; I’m good; that’s amazing; did you sleep well; yes, I did sleep well; awesome. what else do you need to be doing (besides standing beside my chair like that)? No, we said all the things. We said them because I love her–oh, how I love her! In my undoubtedly broken way, I love her enough to lose my mind at least once a day.
“Do you need something else?” I finally ask, because otherwise I think she just might stand waiting indefinitely.
“Well, um, I’m standing here because…” She clears her throat, punctuating the air with her finger, looking at me only from the side while she wobbles back and forth. She starts again. “Well, um…well, um…well, um, I’m standing here because, I’m standing here because…” I begin to pray. Please, Lord, let her not start over. That’s when she reminds me that Night to Shine, the Tim Tebow Foundation’s prom for exceptional people, happens Friday–virtually, this time, and that I had promised to text her boyfriend Josh’s mom on Monday to iron out details for their own personal watch party. “And it’s Monday! So, have you texted her yet?” She giggles, all wild joy, just thinking about the opportunity to see Josh.
“No, not yet.” I can’t help the sigh that comes out with the words, because I really want to point out that I’m barely breathing yet, but Riley will take that literally, so I just take another sip of coffee and inhale. And she waits. And sways. She might as well be knocking on the door or tapping my phone with her finger, and I want to say I love you, but it’s too early for this. She’s the persistent friend from Jesus’ parable on prayer, forever standing at the door at the most inconvenient time, depicted in paintings with forehead desperately pressed against reasonable postponement.
“I will text her, but right now I’m still waking up. Give me some time, okay?” I lift my coffee mug slightly, gesture toward the open Bible in my lap as if to say, See?
“When?” She says.
“When?” I’m offended, but not because I don’t understand what this means to her. I’m offended by her oblivious boldness, by her inability to consider me and wait for a more opportune time.
“When are you going to text her?”
I try for an accurate answer, because I know she’ll hold me accountable. I scan through the needs of the day in my mind, the afternoon of cooking ahead of me. “I’ll try to do it later today. Right now, you should get ready for school.”
She stretches to signal her reluctance, making a loud, prolonged sound as she reaches her hands toward the ceiling. Her pajama shirt rides up.
I close my eyes and begin to pray again, Lord, please, refusing to watch as she ever-so-slowly lets her arms drift back down and turns toward the stairs and her bedroom.
Riley comes back to ask again in the afternoon, while I slice raw chicken into thin strips, one hand on the knife, the other sticky with chicken. Soup simmers on the stove. I have three meals in progress at once, and in my mind, I’m deciding if I can begin a fourth, and she stands at my elbow, bouncing a little on her toes, says, “Mom? Have you texted about Friday yet?” In the parable of the persistent friend, I am the man inside the house.
“No,” I say immediately, and that one syllable partly feels like failure. “I will text her though, I promise,” I say, taking care not to let the knife slip in my fingers.
“When?” she says again. I should never have said Monday.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly, again with many sighs. I bet that poor man in the parable sighed a whole lot. Deep down, I’ve always felt bruised for that man, a little put out with the friend who was, in my mind, a little over-the-top. Shamelessly audacious–shockingly bold, that’s how Jesus described the friend, oddly using him as an illustration in a lesson on how to pray.
“So Jesus basically wants us to annoy God with our prayers?” I once asked a friend after reading the passage, and she pointed out that God doesn’t get impatient or self-absorbed like we do, like I do, like the man in the house does in the parable. She reminded me not to forget the conclusion Jesus reaches in His teaching: If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him (Luke 11:13)! The point is not that God is like the man in the house but that He isn’t, which is why Jesus urges us to ask and ask freely and ask often. God can handle our shocking boldness, and in answer, God will give us Who we need.
Another friend commented that approaching God is always an audacious move, even once.
“I’m cooking right now, Riley. I will text her though; I will,” I say.
But by the time I finish cooking, including dinner for tonight, and clean the kitchen, I feel as though I can hardly string two sentences together. I finally sit down and I hear Riley coming down the stairs, that slow, persistent rhythm of her feet, seeking me out. I hear her and before she can reach me, before she can ask, I pick up my phone and type out that text, only to discover that Josh’s mom has already texted me.
In the parable, Jesus suddenly switches pronouns and makes it about you. “This is the truth,” Jesus said, double-underlining the point: “If your friend won’t get up and help you because of friendship, he’ll help you because of your shameless audacity.” Even if your mom’s too tired to think, she’ll finally send that text. If she won’t do it for love, she’ll do it because you persist.
But how much more, God. In all the ways I’m a limited mother, God is an unlimited Father. So if Riley feels safe enough to come to me again and again and again with the same request, no matter what I’m doing or what time it is or how I feel about it, if she can trust me, as flawed as I am, not to be careless with her heart, she can trust God even more.
Just wait until you see how perfection responds to such persistence, that’s what Jesus implies. You can be obliviously bold (and you are!), because God has never resisted sacrificing Himself.
