Part Three: Prayers For Times Of Transition

: Prayers for Times of Transition

MY YOUNGEST CHILD, Abram, recently transitioned from his toddler bed to what he proudly calls his “big-boy bed.” As my husband lugged the tiny bed frame down the stairs, I stood in my son’s empty room, eyeing the unearthed dust bunnies. I felt something wet on my face. Tears? Were those tears? I wiped my cheek and swept the space for the new bed.

I saw Abram as a fresh newborn in the bassinet, a chubby baby in the crib, a potty-training toddler in the tiny hand-me-down bed. How could all these transitions happen so fast? My long-limbed preschooler tugged on my shirt.

“I’m a little sad, Mommy,” he whispered as his dad began to build his new twin-size loft bed. “I’m a little scared of the big bed.”

I squeezed his hand.

We need a hand to hold when change happens. For me, it’s when my babies aren’t babies anymore. Maybe for you, it’s when your child starts school. Or moves away to college. Maybe it’s when the little one you used to play blocks with is suddenly getting married. Or when the daughter who once played with Matchbox cars has passed driver’s ed and is now behind the wheel. Time passes. Children get older. It’s marvelous and heartbreaking all at once. New experiences and adventures, heartaches and victories loom on the horizon for all of us—and our sons and daughters—but often we can’t see what will happen next. We just have to trust (see Proverbs 3:5-6).

So we whisper thanks for what has been and pray for God’s provision in what will be.

With Abram’s bigger bed came the need for a larger blanket. I headed to the linen closet and pulled out a worn quilt—the one with the seafoam-green stripes that I bought with my own money before I left for college. I tucked it in the four rails of my son’s new loft bed and flashed back to the memory of doing the same thing years ago in my college dorm.

We all have different orientations to time. Some of us find ourselves connected to the past, others are rooted in the present, and still others focus on the future. Watching my children transition through ages and stages has somehow swirled my understanding of time. When I made Abram’s bed, I flashed forward to him flying the nest. And yet I was also transported back in time, seeing my own history with new eyes. In all my planning and packing for college, I never wondered how my parents might have felt sending their daughter off to college and later watching her enter into marriage. Now I wonder what they prayed as I embarked on new adventures and entered new seasons.

Prayer is a hand to hold, a rooted response to transitional moments in our lives. When we pray, the Holy Spirit intercedes and we’re able to loosen our grip and unfurl our grasp on what we want to control, opening ourselves to a posture of listening to and being transformed by what God has done, is doing, and will do.

When Jesus ascended into heaven, His followers found themselves in a time of transition. They had no idea what was happening. Jesus had conquered death, and yet after forty days, He left them again. What would happen next? These devoted believers turned their wonderings into prayer. Men and women gathered in the upper room, marking this passage of sacred, mysterious time together before God.

These prayers were answered with what we call Pentecost. Without warning, a rushing wind filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread among them—the same timeless Spirit who works in us and through us today in our families’ own changing seasons (see Acts 1–2).

We don’t understand the mystery of God, who existed before time began (see 2 Timothy 1:9) and loved before the foundation of the world (see John 17:24). But in times of transition, prayer anchors us to the hope we have. The liturgies in this collection mark the sacred slivers of time when one season of life ends and another begins. We celebrate the firsts while holding space for the lasts, too. We ask God for courage to let go in this gradual undoing of parenthood, resting in the truth and strengthened in the grace that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (see Hebrews 13:8).

In this section, you’ll find prayers for everything from the first day of school to the celebration of a graduation. You’ll find prayers for moving and prayers for when an adult child gets married.

With every time of transition, may we cling to this truth: God has made everything beautiful in its time (see Ecclesiastes 3:11).