"In my first years as a mom, I desperately wanted to keep a passionate spiritual life with God. I wanted to read the Bible. Sit quietly and pray. Maybe even write a few things in my journal. It's just that my little people would not cooperate.
I remember shaking my head and just fussing on the inside about my crazy, chaotic predicament. I am trying to be with God so that I can be a better mom. Anybody here with me? As you can imagine, being alone rarely happened, and I'd feel guilty about my crumbling spiritual life. The only ones I knew to blame were them, the ones I loved so dearly, who needed me every minute.
I would love to tell you that the answer for my struggle came to me in a moment of brilliance, but I was too tired to be brilliant. There was just an afternoon. I think I put on a video for my kids to watch and went up to my bedroom. For some reason kept the door open and sat down on the floor to read my Bible for a minute, and then I stretched out, facedown, on my carpet to pray. I guess I had been praying for one whole minute, and then they came.
I could hear them coming down the hall, but that day, instead of stopping what I was doing, I just kept lying there, praying. Of course, they walked right in, and I'm sure you can guess what they did. They crawled on top of me. And they played with my hair. And they wiggled their little faces up to mine.
"Hey, mamma," one whispered.
"Hey, honey," a gentle, not frustrated voice spoke from within me.
"Watcha doin'?" they asked in unison.
"Praying."
"Oh, it looked like you were sleeping," an honest observer said.
It's been known to happen, I admitted to myself.
Do you know what they did next? Those little toddling children lay down beside me and mostly on top of me and prayed too. Oh, they prayed squirrelly prayers that lasted for only a couple of seconds, but they prayed. My babies were praying because they had seen their mama praying.
I knew God was saying to me, "I want your kids to see you being with me."
After a few minutes, they were done, but I just kept lying there while they ran in and out. Back to the video. Back to check on praying mom. God settled something inside of me that afternoon. The days of being a college coed with lots of time to be alone and to pray were over. That chapter was closed. Honestly, I didn't want to go back. I just longed for the sweetness of how I used to spend time with God.
But lying on my bedroom floor that day... I remember being so very humbled. And grateful. My uptight, "everything must be right" personality could have kept me away from God for years. Trying to get it all together. Trying to be just right before I could spend time with Him. But that day, God so tenderly walked me step-by-step through one of the most powerful lessons about grace I have ever known.
Come to Me messy.
Come to Me when you're tired.
Let the children lie on top of you.
Let them interrupt you.
You do not have to be perfect, just come to Me and let them see.
My kids are older now, but the lesson remains. They need to catch me praying. They should walk past my room and know I'm reading my Bible. They need to find the notes I've written lying on the counter in the kitchen. They need to overhear me praying on the phone with a friend.
I bet your kids do, too.
It seems the lessons we so want to teach our kids are transferred - and not because we sit them down in the living room, pass out ten pages about being spiritual, and then give them a lecture about how our family is going to follow God. The thing that shapes them more deeply is that you and I pursue God in the everyday of living - that our spiritual lives become the backdrop for their childhood. Bibles left open are normal. A kneeling, praying mom is an ordinary sight. Bible studies done at bath time, routine.
Jesus said in Matthew 6 that we are supposed to keep a secret life. To give in secret, pray in secret, and fast in secret. But I think that when we become moms, for a season those sets of eyes sent from heaven to watch you need to see what you do with God in your "unseen" moments.
May it be so for you and me, and and may the children who witness our prayers learn to pray more powerfully because they catch us being with God."
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