Just a Little Prayer

by Donna Poole

“Grandpa Mike! We should pray for him.”

I agreed and wrote Grandpa Mike’s name on the Sunday school prayer list.

Mike has been fighting a long battle with cancer. He’s currently in remission, but treatments continue, and the side effects are troublesome.

“We need to pray for Grandpa John too,’ I said.

I briefly explained some of the problems my husband John is having with sleep apnea, congestive heart failure, and an as yet undiagnosed problem that’s causing his legs to occasionally feel weak and collapse under him. Then my granddaughter, Macy, raised her hand and attempted to summarize all I’d said about her Grandpa John.

“So, Grandpa John. We have to pray for him, because he’s having terrible hot flashes, and they’re giving him so many problems, and they keep him awake all night.”

I managed not to laugh. “Yes, Macy,” I said. “That really would be awful if Grandpa John had to deal with hot flashes on top of everything else he has, wouldn’t it?”

She nodded vigorously.

Did I laugh when I got home? Am I still laughing?

Those are rhetorical questions. But I’ve been thinking about a deeper truth Macy unknowingly reminded me of.

God doesn’t necessarily listen to the words we say.

Before you condemn me as a heretic and stop reading, let me explain.

God doesn’t necessarily listen only to the words we say. He’s too loving a parent for that. He listens to our hearts, and he knows what our hearts need far better than we do.

“No voice of prayer to Thee can rise/ But swift as light Thy love replies;/ Not always what we ask, indeed, / But O most kind! What most we need.” –H. M. Kimball

Any parent knows a toddler will sometimes say, “I need medicine. My head hurts,” while pointing to his tummy. A young child will sometimes say she’s hungry when she’s sleepy. Or kids might see a toy in a store and beg for it when Mom knows it will break ten minutes after they get home.

I’m thankful for the times God, in love, has said “no” to me. And I can think of times he gave me what I asked for and I lived to regret it.

When Mom had her first stroke at age forty-nine my sister Eve and I prayed together and begged God to give her more time, and he did. He gave mom five more years. Mom did get to see daughters married during that time, and grandchildren born, but in many ways, those were miserably unhappy years for her. When Eve found out she had advanced ovarian cancer she reminded me of our prayer for mom and made me promise not to ask God to give her more years.

“Only ask for God’s will, Donna,” she said. “And ask that my life will bring glory to God.”

Eve understood and lived until her dying day the truth Jesus taught us in the Garden of Gethsemane. “Oh my soul, learn from thy Saviour, ere ever thou pourest out thy desires in prayer, first to yield thyself as a whole burnt-offering with the one object that God may be glorified in thee.” –Andrew Murray

That’s what I asked for God for Eve—with an add on. I asked God to heal her if it was his will.

Eve fought a long, hard, brave battle with cancer. Almost every time I saw her, she asked me to pray that her life would honor God, bring glory to him. That’s what she cared about most.

The doctors gave Eve only months to live when they diagnosed her, but she lived six and one half years. Most of those years she was off chemotherapy only a few months at a time, but she lived with love and laughter, and she died with faith and courage. And she did glorify God. She showed me and many others how a Christian lives and dies. But, my prayer for her–did God answer it?

My two other sisters had also been asking God to heal Eve, if it was his will. Mary said, “When I got the phone call that Eve was gone, I said, ‘God answered my prayer. He healed her.’”

God did heal Eve. She’s in heaven now, and cancer can’t follow her there. Love and laugher, faith and courage? Heaven’s gates open wide for those, but cancer will never get in. God may not have given us sisters the answer our words hoped for Eve, but he looked deeper. He answered the cry of our hearts. He knew we loved our sister and wanted what was best for her. It was best her suffering ended. Eve’s suffering was long, but her joy will be longer. Forever long.

I don’t pretend to understand everything about prayer. How could I, when I’m as incapable of understanding God as a sparrow is of understanding me? I’m at least smart enough to know my intelligence is too limited to comprehend the ways of my great Creator. I know this much, because he said so: God is love. Because his essence is love, he answers prayers in love, not capriciously, not selfishly, not maliciously, because these are contrary to his nature. If we don’t understand God, that’s okay. A screaming toddler doesn’t understand his mother’s love when she won’t let him play with the nice, shiny knife. A ten-year-old doesn’t understand her mother’s love when she writes in her diary, “My mom is mean.”

And we don’t understand God’s love when we feel, “My God is mean.”

The wisest of us is a mere child in the kingdom of God. “Let’s give Him the satisfaction of knowing He has some children who can trust their heavenly Father.”—Amy Carmichael

We can trust God. We can pour out everything in our hearts and not worry about getting it right. Just a little prayer can make a world of difference. And if we ask God to help Grandpa John not to have any more trouble with the hot flashes, he’ll know just what we mean. He might not answer our words; he can’t take away non-existent hot flashes¸ but he’ll look deeper and see what it is we really want. He’ll make Grandpa John better here or in heaven. I hope it’s here. And Macy hopes so too.

The end.

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These blogs are now available in book form on Amazon:

Backroad Ramblings Volume One: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Two: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Three: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Four: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter