Ain't No Yellow Brick Road

"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Matthew 6:5-8

Prayer must become an integral and important part of our lives as the parents of disabled children. We have much to pray about on matters ranging from our own ability to cope to the physical and spiritual development, well-being and health of our kids.

The need to pray arrives before they do. It never leaves us.

What’s more, if we are honest, we know that there are days when the words simply won’t come. We find ourselves too infuriated or too grieved to pray. Our anger, our frustration, our weariness over the things we must do and the lives our children live, leave us unable to bend our knees, to submit our hearts, to open ourselves up before God Almighty.

Nevertheless, we must find a way to pray. Christ’s speaks to us of “when” we pray, not if. He expects it.We are given little choice, really. So, when we struggle with the "where do I turn?" thinking, we should start in Matthew, listening closely to what Jesus tells his intimates – and us – about how to pray.

We’re not to be like the hypocrites, mere actors they, posing for the crowds and those around them, spouting words that ring hollow the moment they leave their mouths. No, our call is to be genuine and honest, whether we come before God on a day that our wounds are raw or a day when a new joy has taken hold.

We’re to take up such matters “in secret.” It’s a private matter, this, not one to leave sitting on the table for every minute of the day. To be sure, there are parts of our struggles, there are pieces of our hope, there are matters of prayer which we will share with others.

But our primary mode of praying is to be in secret, in a still, secure place. We are talking here about a one-to-one conversation with the God of all creation. We should not enter into it lightly or give ourselves over to “babbling.” We must set aside distractions, the woes of the workaday world, and the laundry list of to-do items that shapes our day-to-day lives.

We must be intentional about what we will say, deliberate in how we say it, and precise in what we mean. What’s more, we must realize God is waiting for us. He knows “what you need” and so he waits for us to come, waits for us to seek his attention, waits for us to call out. We initiate the conversation.

We enter into such places, speaking in such manner, not to change God’s thinking on our child or on matters related to his or her health and life. Rather, the change that will take place comes within us. We invite the change by seizing prayer for what it is – opportunity, a chance to be alone with and intimate conversation with the God of all creation.

God, our Abba, our father, comes into that place and finds us, broken and bowed. We are often eized by the fears of what yet may come and often unable to remember, for longer than a moment, the blessings that have come to us as we make this walk.

God comes into such a space and we find not condemnation for our doubts and anger. We are not met with his wrath for our days away or for our unwillingness to totally submit. We do not find a judgment for the wretched pieces of us.

Instead, God comes into such space, whispers into our heart, and plants within us a hope that will not die and a connection that sustains us in this day and that we can, on another day, pass on to our child.