Learning to live a life of prayer has changed my life radically for the better. My life isn’t perfect, but I see Christ working daily in divine ways now that I make prayer my highest priority in life. To inspire others to find hope through prayer, I wrote, Prayers of a Mother’s Heart, a hope-filled prayer guide for mothers and grandmothers. The book is available in the Kindle format and can be downloaded at Amazon.com.
Amazon offers an option to borrow the Kindle book for free or it can be purchased to keep for $2.99. For a sneak peak into the book, you can read part of the intro.
Introduction
Prayer became as vital to me as breathing when I became the most desperate for Jesus. I realized my serious need for prayer when I was a thirty-one-year-old mother and was about to give birth to my second child. I had been so busy in the previous years that my daily prayer time had dwindled and my problems seemed to be taking over my life. I felt like I was in a deep pit that I couldn’t escape from. It was a time when fear consumed me and darkness was all around me.
My twelve-year marriage was empty. My finances were a mess. My first-born child was suddenly so overcome with fear that she wouldn’t leave my side. Every evening I had to sleep on a pallet next to her, because she would awaken during the night screaming until she could touch me and know that I was right there with her. My home was filled with an overpowering sense of despair. Day after day, I woke up with a weight so heavy that I could barely get out of bed. But every day, I would get up and force myself to put one foot in front of the other and go through the motions of living.
I had been a happy person for most of my life. I had always been able to see the best in every situation in the past. “Think positively; it could always be worse,” I would tell myself. But this time, my positive attitude tactics were not working. “Nothing could be worse than this,” I thought. There was nothing worse than the darkness I was experiencing in my soul. No matter how I tried to pull myself out of it, nothing worked. For the first time in my life, I felt hopeless—and helpless.
All my life, I had been taught about Jesus. I had heard story after story about His redemptive love. But in my darkest hour, He seemed so far away from me. I wanted to die. My strongest prayer was that the second coming of Christ would be soon. I didn’t want to face another day, and I desperately wanted deliverance from the situation I was in.
Just weeks before this darkness invaded my life, I seemed relatively fine. I was living life as a busy mom, driving my daughter Christa to school and to all of her activities, and keeping my house in good shape. I had recently thrown a big birthday bash for Christa’s seventh birthday. I had stayed up all hours of the night making homemade tiaras and princess wands. I had baked individual Cinderella cakes for each guest and designed a large Cinderella cake for the centerpiece of the table. It was all about creating the dream party for my daughter and looking like superwoman to all of our friends.
On the outside, things appeared great in my life. But on the inside, I was a terrified mom carrying the weight of many problems on my shoulders. I had somehow been able to hold myself together up until that point. Little did I know that it would only take one small thing to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
My self-sufficient strength caved in on a Wednesday night at the beginning of February 1997, less than eight weeks before the due date of my unborn baby. I had taken my daughter to an Awana Club meeting at church that evening, planning to drop her off like usual. But this particular night, things were different. Christa became consumed with fear and she cried and pleaded with me to take her home. After what seemed like ten minutes, the teacher lovingly convinced Christa to stay and enjoy her class. With reservations about leaving her there, I slipped away and went home for what I had hoped would be a short time of refreshment. But instead, I sat down at my dining room table and began to sob.
…I hope you’ll read the rest of the story.
