Not My Will But Yours

Nothing can make you feel as helpless as the desire to help, but the inability to do so.

~This year God has called me away from the tangible ability of problem solving service to the front lines of prayer.  He has asked me time and time again, to surrender my natural fix-it woman desire and instead go to Him through prayer.

~Surrendering my problem solving capabilities wasn’t too hard, that is until it involved my own children.  It was okay when God asked me to pray for my son even though we hadn’t received any correspondence and my mommy senses knew something was wrong.  (It was he had pneumonia).  But I surrendered in prayer because I at least knew where he was.

~It was okay (sort of) when God again prompted me to hit my knees in prayer because the start of the pandemic was going to keep us from attending our oldest son’s graduation.  The graduation that he had worked so hard for and the worst part was that we weren’t even able to warn him before hand.  

~But as time went on it got harder and harder.  Not only were we not allowed to see our boy, but we were unable to communicate, and even unaware of his location.  The only thing my husband & I knew for sure (besides that our son’s phone was broken) was that he couldn’t stand one more minute of being sequestered away, not even for his own safety.  Our son needed daily purposeful interactions in order to thrive, to have hope.  He needed life to go on, a routine to look forward to.  Being locked away from the outside world was killing him.

~For me not being able to offer help was one thing, but not being able to hear my son’s voice so that I could gauge how he was doing was another.  This absolutely broke my mama heart.  I didn’t want to pray aloud about this.  I wanted to fix it.  I didn’t want to hit my knees in prayer.  I wanted to storm the castle walls that were preventing me from having access to my boy.

~But and I mean BUT God was calling me into a new kind of prayer life, a new kind of surrender.  I could fight Him on this and do absolutely nothing or I could do something that might not change the situation, but would at least change me.  So I began by pouting out loud, (yes, I had a Jonah moment).  “God, I want to see my boy, to hear his voice, to fix this.  I don’t want my only option to be to come to you in prayer.”  

~OUCH!  As soon as those words exited my mouth, I wanted to recall them.  Talk about instant attitude change, those words caught my attention and my prayer immediately changed.  “God, I don’t really want my will in this, no matter how much I believe that I do.  I want your will for my son.  I want you to have your way in my son’s life, in my life, in this world.”

~And just like that I realized that I had once again taken ownership of a problem that God wanted to be Lord of.  So, I unfisted my hands and laid my son, his well being, and our relationship before the Lord in prayer.  

~I ran to my refuge, my fortress, my Hightower so thankful that He wouldn’t regard me in anger, but would welcome me into His presence.  

~Where Does Your Help Come From?