It’s 12:36 a.m. I do not have a blinking alarm clock. I do not have a ticking analog clock. I have the small set of numbers in the top left-hand of my phone screen, silent and moving—time marching on unnoticed, until I notice. 12:37.
The sound marking the passage of these midnight minutes is the rise and fall of my daughter’s breathing. There’s a squeak on the exhale. She is tired—and should be, having fussed and cried and whimpered her way through the witching hours of the evening-turned-night. Bundled now in her pink lace sleep sack, she sleeps hard, cocooned to my chest. Her inhales deepen. Her squeaks are slighter on the exhales.
I called a friend today, my postpartum hibernation punctuated by FaceTimes from afar. She asked what I’ve learned about God recently. Portions of the Lord’s Prayer came to mind, how they encouraged me in the long midnight hours of parenthood. May looking at them through this lens bless you, too, wherever you are in your parenting story.
When You Pray…
Jesus is preaching to a crowd gathered on a hillside, overlooking the Sea of Galilee. From this sermon, we have the Beatitudes, teachings on the law, works, anger, lust, divorce, oaths, retaliation, loving your enemy, and giving. Then we come to prayer.
Before Jesus gets to the substance of his prayer, he talks about the context for it. “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret…” (Matt. 6:6).
Isn’t that where we find ourselves so often, even unintentionally? The minutes tick by, and there I am, night after night, nursing and rocking and shushing, alone in my room in prayer. Community is important. Praying for others, and together, is important. But this is not a replacement for time alone with our Father.
Our Father! As parents, we pray to the greatest Parent. He understands our hearts. He loves his Son. He once had a Child die. He pioneered our adoption, bringing us in as sons and daughters, so that we may freely cry out, “Abba, Father!” Knowing who we pray to so fundamentally affects how we pray and what we request. As this article is part of a series, I’ll only touch on a small portion of the Lord’s prayer, but I’d be remiss to not mention the greater context. Our Father!
Daily Bread
In the weeks and months following our daughter’s birth, I realized newfound anxieties sprinkled throughout my day. To be clear, I don’t think these amount to clinical postpartum anxiety, but rather, garden-variety anxieties now blooming in the specific postpartum season. Is she sleeping enough? Is this amount of spit-up normal? Is she gaining enough? Is my recovery normal?
We were exhausted. My prayers became desperate little dribbles: God, please help her sleep safely and soundly. Please let her growth continue to be on track. Please save her soul, never let her know a day in her life without you. Please keep the crying at bay until I finish showering. Etc., etc.
I was worried: were these what Jesus meant when he cautioned against “heaping up empty phrases, vain repetitions” (Matt. 6:7)? I was doing a lot of repeating. I did not feel as if I had stamina or time to sit and pray and think and study deeply. And yet, I did not want my prayers to be unintentionally disingenuous, half-hearted. I mentioned this to my husband. “But, isn’t that asking for daily bread?” he responded.
I dug into the Word a bit, read a commentary. I followed breadcrumbs to Luke, where the widow knocks and knocks and knocks on the judge’s door. Thanks to her persistence, he finally acquiesces, gives in to her request. “And the Lord said, ‘Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them?” (Luke 18:6-7).
My exegesis is not perfect, but it was encouraging. While our desired answers or timing are not guaranteed, we are still welcome to approach the throne room boldly, to find grace and help in time of need (Heb. 4:16). Our Father welcomes our prayers. Repeated requests are not the same thing as vain repetition. Daily bread is just that: daily.
Living Bread
What else is daily bread? I followed breadcrumbs again; they led to the book of John. Jesus is in Capernaum just after feeding the 5000. The crowds seek him because they “ate their fill of the loaves” (John 6:26). They are asking how he does these works and signs, recalling Moses and manna in the wilderness. “Jesus then said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world’” (John 6:32-34). They beg for this bread again, daily, always, and Jesus responds, reminiscent of the burning bush and holy ground and Moses and God: “I AM the bread of life” (John 6:35).
When we ask for daily bread, we’re acknowledging we have a hunger that needs daily sustenance. But it isn’t merely physical. Our hunger as parents—broader, as Christians—is spiritual. It is for the Bread of Life, the Savior of the world. We need to knock on his door daily. We need to seek communion with him. We need to see our need and satisfy it in him.
This is hard. When we are tired with spit-up caked to our PJs, and the crying won’t stop, and it’s been days since we’ve showered, this is hard. Though I’ve yet to experience these days, I imagine that even when we are rested, showered, and in clean clothes, with grown babies who sleep in their own beds, this will still be hard. But we’re not left to stumble and plead on our own.
God Hears
Hebrews reminds us that we have a great High Priest who intercedes for us (Heb. 7:25). Romans reminds us that the Spirit prays when we have groanings too deep for words (Rom. 8:26). The Psalms remind us that even when we cling to God, it is ultimately his right hand that upholds us (63:7).
So approach and ask, boldly and daily, for bread that satisfies. And when you do, trust that God will hear. After all, it’s how Jesus, the Bread of Life himself, taught us to pray.
