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Changed

I suck at prayer.  If you need someone to pray for you, I'm probably not your girl.  Sure, I'll say I'll do it.  I'll even have good intentions to get it done.  But I won't.  The light will turn green, the kids will yell, the phone will ring and I will forget.  Every time.  My personal prayer life isn't much better.  It's embarrassing to say, but I'm too rushed, tired, and distracted.  The thought of prayer seldom crosses my mind.

Apparently, God has been noticing.  In the past few months I have found myself on the outskirts of situation after situation that lead me straight to my knees.  Not a passing "Please God work in that situation" way, but a "My words have run dry and still I pray" kind of way.  I have prayed myself to sleep and then awoken with an urgency to pray again.  I have wept as I pleaded with God to work miracles.  I have prayed that God's hand would be seen and I have prayed that Satan's lies would be revealed.

 Then, on Friday night, I found myself standing in a pediatric hospital room rocking a sweet little boy to sleep while his mama lay broken and exhausted on the bed across the room.  In the stillness of night, I began to pray.  As natural as breathing, it came.  I prayed for healing and rest and grace and strength.  I prayed and I rocked until both were asleep.  I prayed through the parking lot and on my drive across town.  I prayed myself to sleep.

If you would have looked in on me that night, you would have seen me smiling.  Not because I was doing some grand thing, but because for the first time I really knew that God was changing me.  He had given me a heart of prayer.  I may still get distracted and forget, but we're working on it.  Knowing that He is still working gives me hope.  Hope for my quiet time, attitude, patience, self-control, selfishness.............. you get the idea.  He is blessing me.  Through tears and heartbreak.  He is working.

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Comments

  1. Love you sweet friend and thank you for praying for me and my sweet baby boy :) I felt those prayers more than you will know and was so blessed by you being there rocking my little guy to sleep! Love you

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  2. Erin, what a grand blessing it is that God never gives up on us! I love how He uses desperate situations to bring us to our knees, knowing sometimes the only thing we can pray is mumblings and heartfelt groanings which the Holy Spirit has to intercede for us. He then turns that desperation into the greatest of blessings and we grow and are changed as a result! Oh, how I love Him!

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  3. Isn't it amazing that He loves us enough to grow us? This is a great post, Erin. Thank you.

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