Part Five: Prayers For The Parenting Journey

: Prayers for the Parenting Journey

WHEN I WAS NINE MONTHS PREGNANT with my youngest son, I’d waddle into our living room and collapse into a heap of exhaustion on the couch. Kicking up my swollen feet, I’d rest my three-month-old daughter Eliza on my growing bump, where she’d snuggle in and we’d both fight back sleep as a preschooler and a kindergartener played around us.

I always like to watch people’s faces when I tell them I was nine months pregnant with a newborn.

The knitting together of my family has been beautiful and heartbreaking, wild and sweet. Eliza’s path to being my daughter took her across state lines and bloodlines, through temporary care, and finally, permanently into our family through adoption.

My parenting journey has been marked by surprising joys and unexpected disappointments. I’m sure yours has too.

As I prepared for our fourth child, an artist friend sent me a shirt she had made. On the front it read, “Motherhood is sanctifying.” After our son was born, I stood in front of our small-town church, wearing the shirt. I held a swaddled baby in each arm and hoped my husband could capture a picture before I ended up covered in spit-up.

Parenting is definitely sanctifying.

I’m in a different stage of parenting now, but through the varied seasons of life together, I’ve learned even more about myself as I walk with my children. I see parts of me I wish weren’t there—my proclivity to lose my temper and slam the door in frustration, for example. When I was a kid, I remember my dad getting upset about something. He yelled and, in his anger, threw a box of Band-Aids off a table. I watched wide eyed as little paper bandages fluttered through the air, twisting and twirling like the winged helicopter seeds from our backyard maple tree.

I don’t remember what he was frustrated about, but I do remember that after he cooled off, he came into my room, sat on the edge of my bed, and apologized. Hearing a parent say “I’m sorry” has had a profound impact on the way I interact with my kids. I don’t always get it right, but I try to be intentional about asking for their forgiveness. Parenting isn’t just sanctifying; it’s humbling, heartbreaking, and healing all at once.

I wonder what it was like for Mary and Joseph to embark on their parenting journey—a journey that surely highlighted awestruck wonderings and deep-seated fears as they welcomed a tiny baby into a weary world. What was God doing? Why them? Why now? Why couldn’t they even find a place indoors for Mary to give birth?

We have plenty of questions of our own. We don’t have all the answers, but just as the Israelites had a pillar of fire by night to light the way in the darkness (see Exodus 13:21), we, too, have a God who provides warmth and light for all time. This is true for the times we (or our children) have gotten it right and for the times we (or our children) most certainly haven’t. For the times we feel lonely and adrift, and for the times we feel we may never get to be alone again. As we walk this path of parenting, we don’t often get to see much beyond what’s right in front of us. In the overwhelm and the unknowns of life together, we have to trust that God will illuminate the path and give us what we need for the day. And we cling to that stubborn hope that in the end, the light shines in the darkness—and the darkness has not overcome it (see John 1:5).

When an angel visited Mary and told her the life-shattering news of her sacred pregnancy, Mary’s first act of parenting Jesus was to pray (see Luke 1:46-55). Like Mary, we can turn to God in moments of worship and awe—and in moments of unknowing, too. All these prayers matter in cosmic, eternal ways we can’t begin to fathom.

The liturgies in this section hold up a broad range of what it is to ask God to guide us when parenting is honestly just overwhelming. What do you pray when your child has been bullied—or when your child has been the one perpetuating harm? What do you pray when you’re holding the many tensions of parenting a child in foster care or when you’re not sure how to navigate the complicated feelings of your teen?

Theologian Walter Brueggemann puts it this way: “Prayer is an act of openness to the One who sits on the throne of mercy. When we pray, we participate in the ultimate practice of humanness as we yield to a Power greater than ourselves. Our best prayers engage in candor about our lives, practice vulnerability, run risks, and rest in confident trust.”3

When the words to pray are hard to come by and you find yourself collapsing on the couch, may these prayers light the way in your parenting journey.