Unwritten and Wordless

When I was little, one of my favorite people in the whole world moved away. My uncle and aunt went to study in the United States, taking my closest cousin with them. After a couple of years, they went as missionaries to Spain. My parents and her parents stayed in touch. They would send letters and pictures, and every four years, they would come back. In my teenage years, every once in a while, I would write her a letter. Sometimes, I would start it and actually never even get to the end - the unfinished letter being put away with some other papers in my closet. Other times, I would finish it, put it in an envelope, address it, but never take the bus to the nearest post office. Lucky for us, we ended up (very miraculously) going to the same college, so we got three solid years of being only a floor away from each other in the dorm.

I have a box full of wedding thank you notes that I didn't write. After seven years, I finally threw away the ones I wrote but never mailed. Words come easy to me, but they seem to leave as quickly as they come. Maybe I just need to finish what I start. Maybe it's that sometimes, I'm afraid I don't have the right words to truly express what I wish to say. (Maybe that's why this blog has been dormant since November.)

This week, I realized that the same thing happens to me with prayer a lot of times. I pray for others, and if I tell you that I am praying for you, I am. However, when it comes to bringing my own needs before the Lord, words elude me. What do I really want to pray for? What do I need? Where do I even begin? And sometimes, I start and then don't really know where it is that I was going to with the prayer. And so, I just tuck it away.

I was in this nebulous place earlier this week. I was worried about our kids, thinking I needed to pray for them, but not quite getting how to pray, or for what. It bothered me, and I just had this feeling that I needed to pray for something, and I couldn't put a finger on it.

Yesterday, I got a text from one of my dear friends from Guatemala who now lives in Austria. We hadn't spoken since Christmas. She said "you've been on my mind. Everyone doing OK?" So, as we start texting, and I'm trying to think if I can actually dive into a deep conversation right then and there, while at the grocery store with one child in tow, she says 'I dreamed about your kids, and I didn't get much detail, but I understood that the Lord wants me to be praying for them... that I'm supposed to take care of them in prayer.'

Wait. What? For days, I've been feeling that I need to pray, and I can't find the words, and this friend on the other side of the world dreams about having to pray for my children! You see, when I start writing and don't send a letter, or I don't post it, the words fall flat. They vanish.

But with prayer... oh with prayer, it's a whole new different supernatural ball game. Romans 8:26-27 tells us this fun dynamic: "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. "