I tend to think of seasons as four separate compartments to the year. Like nesting boxes in graduated sizes.
I forget that they are more like the Lego blocks in my son’s latest creation. Interlocking and overlapping. Difficult to pry apart.
Recently, I stood over the sink and ate a peach. It tasted perfectly peachy, and the juice ran in rivers down my right arm. Like a sunset, melting.
I held the fading summer sun in my hand, and watched gray clouds hauling themselves briskly across an autumn sky. Yellow leaves somersaulted across the grass.
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I also tend to think of prayer in separate compartments. Like the paper trays I keep on my desk.
There is the inbox and the outbox. There is a spot marked urgent and one for the less pressing overflow.
If I think long enough, I can assign each prayer a neat label. Answered. Unanswered. Ongoing. Expires in five days. The paper trail of prayer is clearly defined. Requests move in one direction. Responses in the other.
But of course prayer is nothing like my paper tray. Of course, of course, I tell myself. Of course it is so much more like standing in a chill autumn wind while you hold summer in your hand.
The truly astonishing thing about prayer is not that our prayers are sometimes answered. The thing that never fails to startle me, to wake me up and scatter the paper piles of my mind, is that even the prayers themselves are given.
First, the prayer like one falling leaf.
Then, the answer, like the taste of that sweet peach.
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On Friday, I breathed out the heaviness of the whole week with the thought It has been a long time since someone prayed for me.
That sort of thing was once a regular occurrence. I lived on a cushion of tightly knit community, and I rarely went more than a week or two without someone reaching out a hand. Someone holding out a prayer.
But two cross-country moves in four years have disrupted so many once-regular things. And every so often I let myself feel the jagged edges. Every so often I lean into them and breathe my own jaggedness.
Which is one way I know to pray without ceasing.
On Saturday a friend drove thirty minutes to come sit on my porch. While our children played, we talked. And we prayed.
She reached out her hand. She gave me her prayer.
I responded, with surprise and with gratitude, Amen.
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Which came first? Like chickens and eggs. Like seeds and flowers. Prayers and answers are a puzzle I hope I never solve.
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Christie,
Your posts take me to a deeper place. Like a good friend, they challenge me to reflect, to be soulful. So I had to reread the part about prayers being answered and being given.
“First, the prayer like one falling leaf.
Then, the answer, like the taste of that sweet peach.”
This week, God answered a prayer concerning my sister. One answered, some still waiting. Day by day, I come to realize how important it is to pray, regardless of whether I get an answer, the prayer is sacred. Especially to the person who is grieving or ill or seeking. Prayer makes a difference because the recipient knows he/she matters. It used to feel foreign to me, to ask someone to pray for or with me, but now it as necessary as water or breath. And I consider it a privilege to be able to do it for someone else. Thank you for such a timely post.
“As necessary as water or breath.” Yes, so true. Thank you for your words, Veronica. Thank you for your story.
First, the description of a peach: “Like a sunset, melting.”
Perfection. And I loved this post.
I owe you an email too, I know. I hope to get to it tonight.
Thank you, Danielle!
love, love, LOVE this. Thank you, Christie, for your lyricism and your rich insights. glorious.
Thank you, Diana. As always, you do my heart good. So grateful for your encouragement.
What a gift, Christie. How I wish I could come
sit with you, eat peaches and pray. You are such a beautifully gifted writer, friend. I always love the ways you see and tell.
Thank you, Ashley. I love seeing you here. And peaches and prayer … yes, some day, my friend.
It’s interesting about compartments. Some things require them, don’t function well or at all without them. Others, they get too compartmentalized and one starts feeling … dis-integrated. I have been thinking about how parts of a life are integrated, and I think that’s what you’re thinking about too, without using that i word.
That is one thing about prayer, isn’t it? It lets us know when it is feeling dis-integrated. How lovely, how glorious, to have a friend come over and integrate prayer into visiting and porch-sitting.
Know what, though? That “It has been a long time since”? Maybe not. That is one appropriate compartmentalizing of prayer, as we pray for people who do not know they are being prayed for; as we are the unknowing beneficiaries of such prayers.
Oh, yes, integration. That word helps. I tend to think in metaphor, but sometimes one strong word, like a rock, can really help clarify my thoughts. And I love your “maybe not.” Such a good reminder. Thank you.
Christie, just wanted to let you know that I’ve been praying for you, though you may not have known it, as Laura Brown mentioned. I thought it might be appropriate, especially given this post, to tell you that I’ve been praying for your writing process, for God to speak to you and through you. He has some true, good, and beautiful things that he wants to say through you. May he encourage you and grace you with strength as you wait for inspiration, as you string words and sentences together, and as you mold your book into a shapely whole, a beautiful vessel for his use. Blessings to you, my friend!
Oh, Allison. Thank you. That is all. Just thank you.