Moms in Touch International

10/17/11: sharing this "Playdate with God" with Laura's community at The Wellspring. I should've done so last week, but--in my exhaustion--I plumb forgot! I cried through my second Moms in Touch International meeting, just this morning.

I'm tired. The baby woke me up several times in the middle of the night, and--for goodness sake--she's thirteen months old; why isn't she sleeping through, yet?

I crawled out of bed at 6:30 to wake up the boy, pack his lunch, get him off to school. He was standing beside me--already wearing his jacket and shoes, inhaling pumpkin bread--when he started giggling.

I shot him a semi-dirty look. "What's so funny?" I asked.

"Mom," he laughed, spraying bread crumbs and bouncing from one foot to the other, "I can't believe I'm just now remembering, but I don't have school, today."

I groaned, sent him back to bed, settled on the couch, opened the laptop to a message from home. Word of an accident. I crawled back into bed to pray, and sleep.

So it's hours later, and I'm tired. I don't want to leave my couch, but I promised, so--wearing the clothes in which I slept (and neglecting to comb my hair)--I drive over to the church. Izabel's is the only other vehicle in the parking lot.

She welcomes me and plays a short video about Moms in Touch International*. I cry along with a girl in the video who confesses: "I used to have an attitude problem. I used to say such mean things to my mom. But then I would hear her and the other moms, downstairs, praying for me. Speaking my name." The tears flow on screen and off as she adds: "It means so much that my mom never gave up on me."

Izabel gives me a sheet. She explains: I should fill in the blanks, but the sheet's just for me, and I'll get a new one, every week. She tells of one mom who kept, in a binder, every sheet she'd ever filled in about her daughter: every prayer request scratched out. And--when that daughter left the nest for college--the mom made a gift of the binder: in it, a record of the prayer requests. Proof of many, many prayers for the all-grown-up, baby bird.

And I realize: I haven't anything more valuable to do--this or any other Monday morning--than to sit with my gentle friend and pray for our children. One hour a week, carved out for prayer over the fruit of our wombs.

Izabel looks at me with her kind, dark eyes and says: "I believe God will honor our prayers."

I nod, and bow.

*If you'd like more information about Moms in Touch International in my neck of the woods, please e-mail me: normalgirl (at) hotmail (dot) com. I'll answer your questions and/or put you in touch with Izabel. And no matter where you live, feel free to click on the blue text, above, to visit the Moms in Touch International website.