Prayers for a Little One

About a week ago I was sitting in a hospital holding a baby that had been born less than 24 hours before. He was tiny and perfect with a head full of hair, enough to make into a baby mohawk as we sat together. He was so innocent and untouched by the world. I loved him from the moment I held him.



He was the baby of one of my students and I had come to visit them. She is only 15 and we ended up spending 24 of those first 48 hours of the baby's life together. Together we tried to figure out his needs, his sleep, and how to get her rest through those midnight hours. We were in this together and I wasn't going to leave her alone.

When he was a little over 24 hours old I took him out of the bassinet and held him close. My student was finally asleep and as I looked at his little face I began to pray. I prayed for his life and his future, that God would raise him up to be a good man, one who served Him and treated others well. I prayed into his little self that he would be a great and responsible man, despite any of the circumstances that would surround him in the years to come. I prayed in those first moments of his life hoping that the prayers would envelop him, that they would become the words that formed his life and that God would honor the requests for his protection.

It felt so important to cover his little self in prayers and love, to have those words seep into his heart. 

I've still been checking up on baby and mom as the days have passed since then. And each time I hold him I whisper tiny prayers into his ear as I kiss his baby face. And every time I think that I most certainly have the best job in the whole entire world.

I am so grateful that I can walk with students through these things. I am so thankful for God's provision and for the way He has honored the prayers spoken over my own life. He consistently proves Himself to be faithful and I know He will be faithful to these young ones.

God is so good. Even in the moments that are tough, God is so very very good. 




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Endings and Beginnings

 I've had a lot of endings that are also beginnings.  In fact, I've lived in Jeff's house for 3.5 years and that's the longest I've lived in a single home since I left Virginia at the age of 16. For over half of my life I have been without roots. I've lived in 9 homes in the last 12 years. That is absurd.  And the truth is, I don't want to be rootless anymore. I want to settle in, build something I am proud of, and never have to pack another moving box in my life. This restless, wandering soul wants to plant my feet on the same ground for more years than I can count and raise my daughter like I was raised in Virginia- with lasting friends and mother-daughter book clubs and people you grow up with. I haven't had a single place I've felt was truly my home since I left Richmond as a teenager, and I am ready to change that.  So in one week, we move to Tennessee. It is a place where a lot of our dreams lie. It is where Jeff will continue a career that he
Read more

Faith Within Suffering

 I didn't talk about God for a while.  When I was younger, I never stopped. My oldest friend and I laughed last weekend about how I would pray for her to attend church when we were kids and tell her about my prayers. When I was in college, it was my purpose. On the reservation it was my profession.  When the waves of suffering hit, I still professed God's goodness for a while, but eventually it became too much. The waves kept knocking me down every time I tried to get up. I was sick in a cancer ward. My relationship with church completely upended. My marriage destroyed.  I stopped talking about my God because I couldn't make sense of my suffering or anyone else's pain. I didn't have any of my youthful certainty. I just had a whole bunch of questions and a whole lot of anger.  Until life got better. Until I got perspective. Until I stood in the snow among the Tetons and said to the wind, "Ok, God, I'm ready. Let's do this again. I'm with you." 
Read more

Five Years After the Divorce

Image
It has been five years, this December, since a judge declared my marriage officially over. It was the culmination of the worst season of my whole life. It was the end of something I had believed was forever. It was a season of bitter tears, struggles with depression and thoughts of suicide, and complete and utter hopelessness. Everything I had believed in had been shattered and in the end, I hadn't been chosen by the one who I chose to marry. I believed the false narrative that I hadn't been good enough, strong enough, or healthy enough. I was certain happiness would never find me again.  Over the next five years, I had to rediscover myself. I had to relearn my strength, my worth, my value. I had to heal from what had happened. I had to be angry and learn how to let that anger go. I lost my relationship with church and grew new relationships with a team of doctors when I got a cancer diagnosis just four months after my divorce was finalized. I had to figure out who God was, who
Read more