Stahlke Adoption

Prayer

Sometime last fall, we began doing devotions following the main meal of the day. After reading a Scripture passage and singing a hymn verse, Jonathan offers a short prayer. He always concludes with a one-sentence petition for Kola, that he may be safe and well-cared-for until we can come get him.

Besides this family devotion time, Jonathan also uses prayer for his "alone" time and to think. Between the two of us, he is the long-term, philosophical planner, while I'm the more practical, short-term, and implementation-minded one. He hasn't had much chance to do his "alone-time" praying in the last two years, however, since his ideal is to walk for a couple hours, praying as he goes. It's hard to find slots of two or three hours in our new life with kids.

Jonathan just completed a full school year of teaching, followed by an intensive summer session for music students in the master's degree program. Last Monday was the first day of his summer, with last school year's teaching finally completed. At moments like this, he likes to do something really different to mark the occasion. For a long time, he's been wanting to have a prayer session about Kola, especially in light of the many delays in the adoption and what we can do about it. He planned his prayer time for Tuesday morning, when all the kids were in summer school, and I was across town at a medical appointment.

To enhance his praying, he decided to fast on Monday and Tuesday, since not eating heightens one's mental abilities. The children really took notice when his place setting at Monday's breakfast contained only a glass of water. He explained that he wanted to pray about Kola for several hours, and that not eating would help him do this. His fasting continued all day Monday and into Tuesday's breakfast. He finally got his prayer and thinking time in on Tuesday morning, and began eating again that day at lunch.

After supper on Monday night, he pulled out the Bible for our regular devotions. We then sang our hymn verse, and he did the prayer just like always. After we finished, seven-year-old Misha looked confused. He asked his dad why the prayer about Kola had been so short. He had braced himself for sitting several hours while Papa prayed. I guess we forgot to explain that there's more than one way to pray!

posted by Stahlkes @ 7:11 AM