A Child's Prayer

My prayers were about to be answered.

My eight-year-old grandson was the messenger.

For five years, I had prayed for a child for my youngest son and his wife. Expensive and painful fertility treatments had failed. Month after month, year after year, they experienced heartache and disappointment. The excitement of a pregnancy ended in the sorrow of miscarriage. Another baby was lost when the birth mother decided at the last minute to keep her baby. I hurt so much for them. Would this trial ever end?

One Sunday morning in October, my eight-year-old grandson Braden and I sat across from each other in the reception area of our small church. It was unusual that no one else was in the room with us. Braden, my most affectionate grandchild, reached for a Bible lying in the middle of the round table.

He thumbed through the pages and said, “Matthew.”

He quickly flipped through a few more pages and declared, “Mark.”

With what appeared to be purpose, he continued, “Luke.”

And he added, “Oh, yes, John,” Braden stopped at John’s Gospel.

His finger moved down the page to verse 14 and he read, "You may ask me for anything in My name, and I will do it.” Moisture filled my eyes as he closed the Bible and just looked me straight in the eye.

I leaned slightly toward him and said, “Okay, Braden, you know how we have been praying for a baby for Uncle Joel and Aunt Jennifer?”

“Yes,” he said, lowering his eyes and raising his shoulders slightly in a shy little shrug.

“Well, Jesus tells us here that if we ask anything in His name, He will do it.” I continued in spite of my concern about what would happen to his fledging faith if God did not answer our prayers in the way and time we expected. I decided to take advantage of an opportunity to transmit my faith to him, so I took courage and said, “Let’s pray right now. You and me.”

“Okay,” he said cautiously, still looking me intently in the eye.

I gently wrapped his hand in mine and prayed this simple prayer, “Lord Jesus, the Bible tells us that if we ask anything in your name, you will do it. We ask you right now for a baby for Joel and Jennifer. We thank you for answering our prayer. Amen.”

Then, with all of the confidence I could muster, I said, “Braden, we asked so we now believe that our prayer will be answered.”

My quiet little grandson simply smiled and nodded.

As we left church, I told my husband about the prayer, “I have never seen Braden open a Bible and read a verse. I wouldn’t be surprised if we get good news this week.”

On Wednesday afternoon, as I was straightening my house, Joel called and said, “Another young woman has chosen us to adopt her baby, who is due in February.” I was stunned. As the good news reached Braden’s house, my daughter, Braden’s mother, got out her Bible, sat her three active boys around the dinner table, and read John 14:14. As she told them the news of the coming baby, she reminded them of Braden’s prayer.

The four months of waiting for the baby to be born were a grueling stretch of patience and holding onto faith. The last birth mother had changed her mind a week before the baby was due. Could they bear another heartbreak? Could I? As I waited and prayed, I read scriptures about the faithfulness of God throughout the Bible, and I reminded myself of the day Braden and I prayed.

Our sixth grandchild, a healthy boy, was born a week early! When we all welcomed the much-anticipated child home, Braden could not take his eyes off his tiny cousin. As Rylan’s long fingers wrapped around Braden’s forefinger, I told the story again of how Braden asked and God answered.

I will continue to tell this story and others because throughout scripture God’s charges his people with passing down the faith to the generations to come. In Psalm 71:18 (NIV), the psalmist says, “Even when I am old and gray, O God, do not forsake me, until I declare your strength to this generation.” The story of Braden’s prayer showed me how opportunities arise in everyday life to teach about God’s continuing faithfulness.

Old Friends

As I sat alone on the front steps of our new house, I saw a girl about my age walking down the street wearing a crisp white middy blouse and tan Bermuda shorts. I was surprised to see her turn into my yard and walk toward me. “Hello, my name is Cheryl. I live three houses down.” A jaunty sailor cap covered short brown hair.

I was eleven years old when my family moved into a new neighborhood, only ten blocks from our old. I transferred to East Ward Elementary on Beach Boulevard in the middle of sixth grade. East Ward was only two or three miles from my school of five years, North Central Elementary, but it seemed a universe away. North Central was one of the poorer school districts in Gulfport and, although my dad worked as a cable repairman for the telephone company, we were rich by North Central standards. My mother made the plaid cotton dresses I wore to school, but at East Ward, most of the girls wore dresses from Northrup’s, the most expensive store in town. Some went to New Orleans every season to shop for new wardrobes. I was surprised to learn that Gulfport had a yacht club and that kids hung out there in the summers, sailing their sunfishes around Gulfport Harbor, and going to Ship Island on private yachts. The children at North Central had taught me compassion for those who had less than I. Now I was the one who had less, but with Cheryl’s help, I made new friends. During the summers, when the others were at the yacht club, Cheryl and I made up our own fun.

I spent a lot of time at the Rose house. I noticed that Cheryl’s family had problems similar to those in my own family, but shame kept us from talking about such things as our fathers’ anger and my mother’s drinking until many years later. Today we would call our families dysfunctional, but back then, before Oprah and Dr. Phil, family problems were secret. Old friends know where you came from.

On summer evenings, a few window air conditioners purred, but mostly the rumble of attic fans muffled the squeals of children playing outside. Summer was rerun time, and there was no cable TV. People didn’t stay inside all the time, and neighbors knew each other. On hot afternoons, kids played softball on the empty lot and, on summer nights, we chased each other around the neighborhood, playing hide and seek. Any adult on the block could be trusted to watch out for the whole gang.

Neither Cheryl nor I had sisters. Her three brothers felt like my own, in good ways and bad. I remember riding bicycles down twenty-fourth street after a “make-over” session while our brothers ridiculed our bright blue eye shadow. Cheryl’s big brother Jim rolled his eyes at brush rollers covered with pink lacy caps and then charged after us like Frankenstein through the dark house after the Dr. Shock late night horror flick. Cheryl remembers my long blonde ponytail. I remember her bouffant hairdo and mini skirts. Old friends knew you when.

Most of all, I remember most is the giggling! One day, while Cheryl and I smeared oatmeal masks on our faces in my bathroom, men working on the back of our house told my dad “they sure do laugh a lot.” Each summer we would devise beauty plans and declare, “We’re coming out of our cocoons!” We would vow to get a boy friend the next school year. Then, of course, we’d giggle. Through high school and junior college, we giggled. We still do. Old friends have lots to laugh about.

Cheryl and I were both “good” girls. We did our share of sneaking around and doing things we shouldn’t, but our antics were tame and lame even by sixties standards. We were terrified of being caught. We strattled the fence between hanging out with the popular crowd and our own goofy brand of nerdiness. When we first began driving, someone taught Cheryl how to make skid marks. “Riding around” was our favorite activity. When she stopped at the gas station in mother’s grey Studebaker, she told the attendant, “fifty-cents worth.” On deserted streets, she rolled backwards, and then jerked the car into drive, the tires screeching and leaving rubber. I didn’t dare try such a thing with our 1959 Ford because my dad drove a telephone truck. It seemed that either he or one of his friends saw anything and everything my brother or I tried to do on the streets of Gulfport.

If either Cheryl or I dated a boy, the other usually dated the boy’s best friend – the double dates lasted through college and until my wedding when Cheryl, my maid of honor, dated the best man. Though Cheryl stayed in Gulfport and I moved to Baton Rouge, she was my sounding board when my mother was sick and dying. She supported me as I raised my children and rejoiced with me over the birth of grandchildren. When I complained about my “boss from hell,” she chimed in and ranted with me. Old friends stand up for you.

In January 1992, my brother walked into my widowed dad’s house on a Sunday afternoon and found him dead. Cheryl, who was visiting her mother on the street, heard the sirens and ran to my dad’s house. Once she saw what had happened, she stood alone in the yard while the coroner arrived and then left. For more than an hour, she stood in the cold until Daddy's body was taken away. She said wanted to be there because I couldn’t. I remember Cheryl in her sailor outfit, but mostly I remember her standing alone in my dad’s yard that January day, standing in place for me.

Almost exactly a year later, I stood in Cheryl’s place. Her brother Jim had a heart attack while visiting Baton Rouge. I rushed to the hospital to find that Jim had already died at age 45. I called Cheryl with the tragic news. I met with the coroner and stayed until family arrived. I was honored to be there when Cheryl could not—to stand in her place. Old friends stand in for you.

Old friends cannot be replaced.

Growing Up

Six reasons to leave a godly legacy:

I’m taking a class in Lifewriting—Composing Your Life given by LSU Lagniappe for “over-50’s.” It is interesting and fun to hear the childhood stories of classmates, most much older than I am. Yesterday, a retired teacher told a story about inviting soldiers who came through Baton Rouge in World War II to her third floor apartment in the old state capital. Imaging living in that grand old building!

Usually the stories lightheartedly describe first days of school, working in vegetable gardens or childhood pranks. One woman has a particularly fun way of storytelling, but yesterday, she said that what she would read was a little “dark” but something she felt she must include in her memoir. She wrote about wanting her family to avoid a family tendency toward self-destruction through addiction. Like my mother, her father had died of alcoholism. I could identify.

The story I read talked about my grandmother Foil and the stories she told. I wrote, “Hearing the same stories year after year made me feel part something solid and lasting. I needed that when I returned home. Because my mother was pregnant when she married my dad--no small thing in 1948--my parents moved to another state, returning home only for a few holidays. I envied people who grew up around family, whose grandparents and parents went to church together and had the same values. People who had family traditions and heard family sayings repeated over and over. Families who got together and told stories and laughed.”

When my mother was dying in 1985, I knew that the Lord told me I should write about that difficult time—the peace I had--the comfort and insight He gave—and the emotional healing I received. Like my classmate, I wanted to warn my children and grandchildren about a family history of alcoholism. Of my grandfather’s eleven brothers and sisters, nine had drinking problems. My grandmother preached and pounded warnings into my mother’s head, but the constant drillings probably pushed her more toward her alcoholism. The alcoholism happened, but warning about it is not why I write.

Writing about my life is fun. It becomes a way to understand, forgive and receive healing. I pray it also becomes a way to mature. Yes, even grandparents need to mature! Especially me. I am reading Extreme Grandparenting by Tim and Marcy Kimmel. They say, “Our children and grandchildren desperately need us to consider it a mandate that we act like grown ups. They need to know that when life is trying to get the best of them, they can look to us and see people they can count on to process everything through years of experiencing God’s grace.” I have certainly experienced God’s grace, but I don’t always act like it. I have let fears from the past hold me back from really trusting God. This is why I am writing about my life—to help me grow up!

No matter how many pages I write, the only real legacy I will leave is a real example of a living, current and active relationship with Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit. An example of trust.