Prayers

So it’s back to this: making choices. Every day with the boys, you have to make a choice that the day is going to be good. I have to make that choice, they have to make that choice. Largely, it rests on me to keep pushing for all of us to make the choices, because if they wake up in a foul mood, or a sad mood, or an angry mood, they’re not going to break out of it without some help.

It’s hit or miss, if I rely on myself. That is, I am generally happy and ready to go in the mornings, but if we start running late, or there’s a lot of whining about breakfast, or they’re slow getting dressed… it can all add up. And then I’m not so nice and I only add to the frustration and misery of the morning.

One of the great blessings of living in the 05 now is that we have a lot more time for and with each other. Even though I am a lot busier scouring the neighborhood for people who don’t know Christ, we spend more time with each other than we have in almost three years. If I let it, resentment builds about that, how hard this has been on them, how hard it has been on me. We’re not much interested in stuff—we just like each other, and any energy we have comes from hanging out, doing even the simplest things, like throwing balled-up socks at the ceiling fan.

I think I am a lot calmer than I have been for, well, two years now. But again, it’s not about my own strength to pull off having a productive relationship with the boys. That still goes awry. Jason Dillard and I were pounding the pavement a few days ago, and he mentioned that he and Tawndee have a kind of modified Liturgy of the Hours. It’s not just devotional time, but there is a sort of Vespers where they discuss the day and God’s presence in it. It got me to being more intentional about what I call The Little Seminary. (Kerry and Tim, you’ll hear about this at your wedding…) The Little Seminary is what I hope me and the boys’ life together is, a space where we learn in a kind of natural way the rhythms of Christian life. It’s not just church on Wednesday and Sundays, but evening prayer, discussion about favorite Bible stories, remembering Jesus…. And now our own sort of Vespers, where we ask about where God was in the day. Thanks, Jason! We’ve added it to our Compline, where we have had over the years some regular prayers that both express and form who we are (That we could know Jesus’ voice so that when He calls we can say “Here I am,” that God might make us “preachers together,” that we would be ready to go to far away places—like Las Vegas, John says—and tell people about Jesus). And it strikes me that a sweet time back in the day was when John and Joe were infants, and they would wake up early, it was a good time for Lauds, or praise. And so we start the morning with praising God for another day, for each other, and all the ways He is going to be there with us. That seems like a pretty good choice. This is, finally, “praying without ceasing.”