Dang! I Forgot the Side-mirrors!

          There are times in my life that I feel dry in my prayer life. I feel like I am not connecting, as if I am half-hearted, and perhaps God doesn’t listen to half-hearted prayers. My best prayers, I believe, are simply when I lose myself in honest conversation with God…no flowery words, no great depths, just honesty and a desire to communicate with Him.

            I felt off-kilter in my prayer life during the spring and early summer of this year. So I grabbed a few books on prayer and started reading. I must confess that I still haven’t completely figured this prayer thing out. But I did learn something at this time. I remember reading about prayer and persistence. The book(s) got a bit deep, but I picked up a few things that made sense to me.

            It was at this point in my reading that my youngest daughter came home and announced that she and some friends wanted to go to the beach for the day. The beach is about 3 hours from our home. Young people, you know, do these sorts of things. They have that kind of energy. In fact, I remember doing these things myself: get up, drive, lie in the sun allllllll day, and drive home long after sunset. This works for youth. She asked me this question about a week in advance of the planned day. As she is in college and was home for the summer, we had no problem with these plans. She is a responsible young woman, with Godly values and Godly friends. But perhaps I should correct myself. As she was in college and was home for the summer, I had no problem with her plans. But I did have a problem with the plans of the other umpteen thousand people that would be on the road at the same time as she and her friends. I particularly had a problem with the thousands of people that would be on the road at the same time after dark. On a Saturday night. Late, on a Saturday night. Especially the drunk ones.

            So, being in a bit of a praying mode, I began to pray. I prayed the entire week, leading up to this trip. I prayed all over that car. I prayed left-side, right-side, front, back, above, underneath, and within….not to mention each and every tire.

            And so the day arrived. They went. They had fun – sun, shrimp, and sea.  Eventually, the sun set. We had set a determined time for them to start home. I believe it was somewhere around 8:30pm or 9:00pm. Our thought was that this would get them home sometime around mid-night and we could at least sleep more soundly from mid-night onward. She did contact us and ask to extend our deadline by 30 minutes. Beach-town crowds, we reasoned, and dinner time, make for long lines, and thus we agreed to her decision.

            I gamely watched a movie for the evening, with my husband. But I must be honest. I love to sleep. It is one of my gifts. I’m not sure what purpose it serves, but it is a God-given talent. My husband, on the other hand, has the blessing of needing less sleep. So, at movie’s end, despite the parental concerns rumbling inside of me, I went to sleep; I left my trustworthy husband to stand guard for our daughter’s return.

            One must know that, being a Godly mother, I had calculated, down to the minute, the approximate time our daughter and her friends should be arriving at our house. One must also know that I did go to sleep. One must further know that as I went to sleep, I drifted off praying vehemently for their safety. I saturated that car in prayer. Then I went to sleep.     

            I would like to say that in that motherly type of knowing mode, I awoke mysteriously about the time they were due home. In retrospect, however, I suppose it was the dogs barking at their arrival that awoke me. But, the second I heard the dogs bark, I knew they were home, right on time.

            I ventured forth to give my best sleepy, motherly hug to my daughter. She hugged me back and then looked me dead in the eye and said, “I got hit by a drunk driver.”

            I was aghast. I asked her to repeat herself, which she did. I looked her up and down to check for signs of injury and found….none. Now I was acutely awake and thus asked for an explanation, to which she obliged.

            Fifteen minutes from home, as she got on the by-pass for our town, she noticed a car rapidly approaching from behind. She momentarily thought it was going to rear-end her car, but at the last second, it veered into the other lane, missing her bumper by inches. Before she could breathe, however, the SUV came alongside her and she and her friend heard and felt a loud THWACK and the SUV sped onward. In that instant, they realized what had happened: the two cars had essentially high-fived each other with their side-mirrors. It was a glancing blow at high speed, which resulted in a high release of adrenaline for both my daughter and her friend. The offending SUV did not stop and my daughter, realizing there was no real damage, wisely did not stop either.

            So she came home, shaken, but safe. I went back to bed, wide-eyed, but tired. Eventually, I fell back asleep. Sometime during the night, however, I popped into consciousness. The words “First Thessalonians” came into my mind. What? “First Thessalonians 5.”  If I’m lying, I’m dying. While I did not hear these words, they were impressed upon me in my mind. As I leaned over to reach my Bible came, “First Thessalonians 5:7.” So there I am at , I don’t know, 2:30am, with my reading light, oddly flipping through my Bible to find First Thessalonians 5:7, which reads clearly and unmistakably, “ For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night.”

            I stared at the page. Really? Are you laughing, God? Really. You had to throw that verse to me. You had to wake me up for this, it was so good. Stop it, You’re making me laugh. What? Have you got a verse appropriate for everything? Seriously?

            Later, I pondered the verse. Oh, I think God was winking and smiling and laughing right there in the pages, right there between the lines. But I also think He had a point to make, several points, really.

            First, trust in Him. For anyone out there, but especially for parents, it comes down to simply: trust in Him. Do you or don’t you? If you’re going to trust in Him, you sleep at night. You either do trust or you don’t. If you trust, you trust, and sleep. Yes, there are drunks out there. God acknowledges this. They especially like to get drunk at night. And drive. Which leads me back to trust. Trust like a child, and sleep.        

            Secondly, there’s this: I forgot the side-mirrors. In all my praying and in all my covering that car with prayer, I never once asked God to protect the side-mirrors. Is that why the side-mirror got whacked? One can study prayer and read about prayer and even pray about prayer. One can ask questions about prayer, endless questions. Do I actually affect God’s actions by prayer? Should I be persistently repetitive in prayer? Or does God hear me the first time and that’s good enough? If I miss a detail, does that leave a gap in the prayer, in the cosmos? I have no idea. I have no theological training. I don’t know. But here is what I do know: I prayed. I talked with God and I had faith. That’s it.

            I know there is a lot I could learn about prayer. And I welcome learning. But intellectual knowledge aside, I just know that when I bow my head in respect for the Maker of the universe and thank Him for His Wondrousness, He listens. I know He listens. And He so very much cares. His answers aren’t always what we want or expect. I’m not so naïve as to think that. I know otherwise. I know people who well know otherwise. But He cares. And I trust that He cares. Even if the side-mirrors get whacked. Or worse. He cares. And I trust. And sleep.