This is an excerpt from one of my “McTopics” presentations for the Mothers Of Preschoolers group I mentor.
Prayer Life – if Jesus made it a priority – and He’s Jesus! – then we should too! But in the hectic lives of moms with young kids, it can be challenging to fit it in. I know – I was there, and to prove it with apologies to Laura Numeroff (author of the “If You Give a Mouse…” books), please enjoy:
If you give a mommy a free hour …..by Cindy McMahon
If you give a mommy a free hour of quiet time to spend in prayer and meditation while her baby naps, she’s going to need a hot cup of coffee to go with it.
When she goes to get her favorite coffee cup, she notices that she never started the dishwasher. While rinsing out her cup, she sees that there are some additional empty spaces in the dishwasher, so she tours the house, gathering up a few dirty dishes to fill the dishwasher.
While her coffee is brewing, she gets a text from her best friend, who wants to know if she’ll be able have a playdate at the park later in the week. She opens up her laptop to check her online calendar, and realizes that she never scheduled her dental checkup – three months late! Quickly, she looks up her dentist’s phone number, whose name is alphabetically next to her in-laws’ and she realizes that she never got around to ordering her mother-in-law’s birthday gift from Amazon.com.
She goes online and sees that she has 12 notifications on Facebook and 32 unread emails. As she checks those notifications (mostly on a cute pic she uploaded of her sleeping angel) , she sees that someone has shared a Pinterest pin with her.
Ooooh – it’s a darling craft she wants to do with her older kids. But she’ll need clothespins. She goes into the laundry room to see how many clothespins she has, and realizes that she never put the last load of clothes (from two days ago) into the dryer. She notices they smell kind of funky, and so she decides to run them again with a little baking soda to refresh them.
Heading back into the kitchen to get the baking soda, she smells her coffee. She tries to pour it without putting down the baking soda, and drops the baking soda, which was wide open, onto the kitchen floor. She puts down the coffee pot and sweeps up the spill – and the rest of the kitchen, for good measure.
Finally, she fills her favorite mug and carries it over to her cozy spot on the couch, where her prayer list and Bible, open to Proverbs 31, is waiting. As she sits down, she wonders if she’ll be able to stay awake if she closes her eyes in prayer. Just as she does, she hears crying on the baby monitor, looks at her watch and realizes that naptime is over.
If you give a mommy a cup of coffee, she’s going to need a free hour of prayer time
to go with it.
Have you been there? Me too! With so much to be done – both the “have to do’s” and the “want to do’s” – it is challenging to make the time to just sit and spend time with God. But as I’ve found over the years, it is such a key component of living a Spirit-filled, “slow-to-anger,” wise-decision-making kind of life. Jesus, at the height of his ministry when he was in high demand and being sought after by thousands, made solitary prayer a priority. That’s humbling, really, because as busy as I am, my schedule is certainly not as full as his! And yet, he stole away for quiet time with God. Obviously, we need to as well!
Get started:
1. If you haven’t been regularly spending time in prayer, start small – how about 5 or 10 minutes? Can you wake up a bit earlier? Lock yourself in the bathroom? The car?)
2. Grab a pen & paper: As you sit quietly, plenty of forgotten tasks will flood your mind. Write them down, and get back to prayer (don’t go off and do them!)
3. Cellphone goes to another room.
4. Read the Bible: Psalms are my favorites – reminders of how amazing God has been through the ages – and certainly, that my situation isn’t as bad as David’s was at times! And, it helps to settle me in. You can even print a Psalm out from a Bible website like BibleGateway.com the night before.
5. Prayer routine: I’ve followed the *Moms In Prayer (formerly Moms In Touch) fours steps of prayer for the last 10 years and so I begin with praise for God, then I move into a moment or two (or more sometimes!) of quiet confession. Next comes a period of thanking God for what he’s done or answers to prayer that I’ve received. Then, finally, I begin asking God for his help in certain areas. *momsinprayer.org
Benefits: I love the phrase Prayer doesn’t change God, it changes us. He wants to hear from us (what parent doesn’t want to hear from their kid?) But our time with Him makes us better folk.
Spirit Girl: What I’ve experienced in the days when I begin with prayer (and I confess this is not every single day – but I try!) is a wiser, more calm approach to everything. From long lines in the market to inconsiderate drivers, broken glass to sass from my kids, my reactions are more in the *Fruit of the Spirit category than the “react now, regret it later” mode, which seems to be my default. The new jar of salsa still breaks and splatters when it hits the kitchen floor, and people still don’t understand what a four-way-stop means (that all four cars have to stop in order for it to work!!), but that stuff bothers me less. I have even been known to shrug and laugh about it.
Wise-time management: Regular prayer has me in the habit of reflecting upon any day’s to-do list and figuring out which things are important, and which things can wait (or go away, or be delegated – that’s my favorite!). Lots of paring down this way – there may even be time for a cup of coffee later!
Now that quiet time with God has become more the norm than the exception, when I do miss that morning window, I will regroup when I remember and take a moment right then to check in with The Creator. Usually that realization hits after I’ve made an error in judgment (did I really need to walk up and down every aisle at Costco, picking up several impulse items, just because I was there to save $12 on trash compactor bags?) or meted out harsh words for someone I love. Sigh. It’s a process folks.
Finally: I think of it like this: Going through my day without prayer is like going to the supermarket without a list. I might get what I need, but more than likely, I will forget something important and come home with several things that I don’t need and won’t use.
Happy New Year to you – enjoy the fresh start!
*Fruit of the Spirit, from Galatians 5:22-23
New International Version (NIV)
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
McMusings 