“Pray for this one,” I told my friends that I knew would pray.
It was a subtle drip of negativity coming from this child whose once-orphan wounds had threatened to be scars. Subtle enough that no one bumping up against the world outside our home would see, subtle enough to avoid what might incur discipline. (But mama’s have an eye for what brews under the surface.)
I didn’t just hear it, I felt it. The passive-aggressive drip that said less about the sibling or situation of which they were speaking and more about the torrent underneath all those words wore treads under my everyday mama-hood.
So I talked to God.
Change this one’s heart, God. You are healer, would you heal these wounds spilling up and over in front of all of us? Make this one new.
Weeks of prayers became months and I was settling in to what Nate so often calls “the long view.” It may take a decade to see this heart move. You hone your eye for the little milestones when you see the haul ahead as long.
But one day this thought came to me.
What if I made a shift? {Continue reading right here … }
