Honoring Desperate Prayers

How the Dark Days in Early Motherhood Became Light

I opened my simple prayer folder and took my time looking over each name. I’m currently leading a MomCo table at a local church, and I had written the names of each woman, her partner, and her children with their ages on sticky notes and then placed them on a sheet of paper. Folding it in half, it fits in my journal or Bible. High tech, super artsy stuff. So many women on my list had babies recently or were about to have babies. With a six and a four-year-old at home, I am firmly outside of the baby phase but not too far removed. As I prayed for the moms at my table, I reflected on how I felt when I was in the baby trenches.

Before becoming a mom, I had a vibrant spiritual life. I prayed, journaled, and studied my Bible. It wasn’t always perfect, but I had time. I knew bringing a little one into the world would forever change that, but I couldn’t fathom how. So in the last six months of my pregnancy, I hungrily read the Bible in chronological order from start to finish. The fast pace matched my hurried heart as I attempted to prepare for the unknown. I knew that I couldn’t necessarily store up a spiritual life, just like you can’t store up sleep. At the same time, I also desperately wanted one last round of reading the Bible uninterrupted.

As I healed from giving birth and adjusted to motherhood, savoring an expansive quiet time with God was not an option. Some days, I would just open the Bible app to see what the verse of the day was, only to promptly forget it after closing the app. Many days, I would not think to pray, and when I did, my prayers were “Help me!” or “Change him!” or “Why is she still crying?” These were short, bewildered prayers of desperation. I could hardly hear my own thoughts, much less pause long enough to strain to hear God’s. And for a long time, I felt discouraged. Why couldn’t I get back to where I was spiritually before motherhood?

Then I realized, getting back to who I was before my body was stretched and ripped open to bring life into the world was not the point. That woman came with me, but she didn’t exist in the same way anymore. In an intense season, I learned that our spiritual life can look different but be just as vital. My prayers were short, but God heard them. They were self-focused cries, but God honored them. They lacked worship and gratitude, but they were full of faith because I mustered every ounce of belief I had to utter them. In the darkest days of my early motherhood, God did not abandon me. Instead, God patiently slowed me down, so I could walk at God’s pace.

As I prayed for the women at my table, I asked God to meet them where they are in their motherhood journey. Maybe they are able to have extended times of worship at home or study their Bible. Maybe life looks different than they could have ever imagined. Yet, God takes what we have to give in seasons of hard and calls it enough; he multiples it for the good of our souls and our families. Over and over in the Bible, we are reminded of God’s creativity and generosity. From providing a hungry widow with oil to feed her family to multiplying a boy’s lunch of fish and bread to feed the masses, God meets us in our moments of short, desperate prayers and miraculously multiplies their impact.