Wounded Prayer Warrior

Wounded Prayer Warrior

The Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.

Romans 8:26

Amy looked out her window, wishing she had the energy to go outside. But by staying in, she didn’t have to fight panic.

When the attacks started, she had made an immediate appointment with her doctor. After doing numerous tests, he suggested she see a counselor. So, she had seen counselor after counselor. They all said her agoraphobia was the result of problems rooted in her childhood. But that diagnosis didn’t provide a solution, and medication was only a feeble attempt to treat her symptoms.

Amy sighed. “Lord, I feel thrown out by the world,” she whispered. Settling herself on the sofa, she picked up her Bible and pulled out cards she’d saved showing Jesus with children on his lap, leaning against him. She especially liked the one of the giggling little girl with her arms clasped around his neck. What would it have been like to be hugged like that? she thought.

Her counselors had said her mother wasn’t capable of giving unconditional love. But Amy remembered her mother showing great affection toward a younger sibling. It was just me, she thought. I must have been the type even a mother couldn’t love.

Amy had married young to get away from home, but her husband left her for another woman. Now, alone and feeling useless, she longed for a friend who would call or send a note to say, “I’m praying for you. How are you?”

Well, that wasn’t happening. And she couldn’t do anything except ask the Lord to help others. So, with the pictures of Jesus and the children still on her lap, she opened the church bulletin, which the secretary sent each week. On the back, she read the names of homebound or hospitalized members. As she touched her fingertips to each name, she prayed.

Occasionally she wiped tears or circled names of those who had been on the list for a long time. To them, she would send a card to say they hadn’t been forgotten. As she finished praying, she again picked up the picture of Jesus and the little girl. Then she closed her eyes and imagined Jesus hugging her and all the hurting people for whom she had just prayed. Perhaps I’m of some use, after all, she thought. And she hugged the picture again. —SANDRA

Lord, life has a way of constantly disappointing us. Help us—help me—to give you those disappointments and then to march boldly into your sunshine. Thank you that even when we feel as if “all we can do” is pray, we are part of your great love to this hurting world.

It is by those who have suffered that the world has been advanced.

—LEO TOLSTOY (1828–1910), RUSSIAN NOVELIST AND PHILOSOPHER