Prayer

I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him.

—1 Samuel 1:27

As a part of my brother Todd’s birthday gift, my mom put together a slide show of his sailing trip around the world, so after dinner we looked through hundreds of images of remote anchorages and unfamiliar landscapes, sunsets over the water and green mountains rising out of rough navy seas. His sailing trip began and ended in South Haven. They left early on the morning of Henry’s first birthday and arrived back in this same harbor the day after Mother’s Day almost two years later, the very best Mother’s Day gift my mom could have asked for.

People always asked my mom if she was scared, having him so far away on such a small boat, and she always answered the same way. She told them that one of the chief aspects of mothering is prayer, and that she had learned very early with a son like Todd—a son who loves to sail and snowboard and ride dirt bikes and drive race cars and build motorcycles—that prayer was the only thing that would keep her sane.