It kills me to see my kids in pain. I hate when they suffer with colds and flues, cuts and bruises. And it pierces my heart when their hopes and dreams go unfulfilled. Sometimes, I wonder if I feel their pain more intensely then they do. And then I wonder if that’s co-dependency, enmeshment or just motherhood? The only upside, as many of you have experienced, is that there is nothing like my kids pain to get me praying. Praying all day long. I can’t NOT think about them. And there’s nothing like prayer to get my mind and heart clinging to truth, the truth I most need in that moment my heart is aching:
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
James 1:2-4 (emphasis mine)
The first time I intentionally let my daughter suffer was when she was learning to sleep through the night by herself, without any comfort from mom or dad. That was at about 4 months. And it was agony. Listening to her cries and not going to her, was the hardest thing. The only reason we did it was because we knew she needed to be able to sleep through the night. Not so much for our sake, though we needed it too, but for her own. Her body needed a good nights sleep. So we endured the heart wrenching week of crying. And, eventually, she learned to sleep through the night all by herself.
For the past 16 years, I’ve been learning that same lesson over and over. Sometimes the suffering is necessary. Even Jesus “learned obedience from what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). It is a bit easier now that I’ve made peace with the fact that God is not going to protect them from all the hurts that come their way and He’s not going to make every experience wonderful and fun. It’s going to be a mixed bag … some good, some fulfillment, right along side the hurts, disappointments, failures, betrayals and losses. Now, instead of trying to pray away my kids pain, I ask God to allow, to select, the trials that He can best use to draw them to Himself, to teach them His ways, to open their eyes to what is good and true, to what is wrong and false. Instead of removal of pain, I pray they would know the Holy Spirit’s comfort and counsel. OK, that’s not always true. Sometimes my first response is to rescue: to buy them something, to feed them something yummy or to let them have screen time, when normally I would not.
There was one time when I was praying for one of my kids and I heard the Lord say, “I feel the same.” This got me thinking about how their hurts feel to their Heavenly Father. Their Abba Father. Their Perfect Father. Is it possible He goes through some holy version of what I go through? The psalmist says:
The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
Psalm 34:18
And then there’s this:
… the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.
Romans 8:26
When I read about the Holy Spirit’s groaning prayers I thought, ya, that’s how it feels to be my kids mom. Knowing He’s groaning for them, enables my prayers to come out with so much more hope – so much more confidence that my “labor in the Lord is not in vain” (ICor 15:58). I can trust and hope that He is in it with them, for them. And that is when I realize that when I pray it’s not me inviting God in. It’s God, inviting me in.