I love God, my husband, my kids, and the life I have in Jesus. But sometimes I let intentional prayer for my kids fall by the wayside in the midst of day-to-day living that feels so full. It’s not because I’m not a committed Christ-follower or a committed mom. It’s simply because I’m human and am a busy mama, and it’s impossible to do all good things well.
The same goes for you. So can we drop the guilt about it? Okay? okay. We can’t possibly do all good things well, but I’d like to do this thing well, and I’m over the guilt of not always being great at it.
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Here’s a look into how praying for my kids looks right now:
I pray all day long — little snippets here, a little longer over there. A quick plea for help or a quiet thankful or worshipful whisper tucked in between carpool, work, writing, food prep, cleaning, shopping, mothering, schooling, and every other thing that makes up a day.
I pray for each individual child as they come to mind here and there, but I have to say — I know for sure some of our kids have been the beneficiary of heaps more prayer than others. Ahem. But that’s the thing — I don’t just want to pray in hopes of a quick fix or a knee-jerk attempt at problem-solving. I want to pray for their very souls and lives. The now. The future. The eternal.
We pray because we get full access to the God of the universe. We pray because He’s so good to us. We pray because He’s our lifeline. We pray because He asks us to. We get to have a relationship with Him through prayer. We pray because we need to. There are many types of prayer and many things for us to learn about it. This article right HERE is a good start.
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Jeremy and I have tried all the methods: (you know, all the ones our tired minds can think up)
– pray for one child a day, and cycle through the kids daily on repeat
– pray through all the kids as we’re lying in bed at night (seeing as though there are 8 of them, I often fall asleep before getting through them all)
– randomly pray as one of them comes to mind
– start with the youngest and end with the oldest
– pray situationally: who’s injured, who’s struggling, who’s needy?
– prayers written out and stuck on the wall, War Room style
