Seeing God through Prayer

Is prayer on your list of "shoulds" (Along with "I should be exercising more, I should be sticking to a budget...)? It most certainly was on mine. Prayer was the perpetual New Years resolution that I found myself failing at by the first week in February each year. It was one of the many things that I wasn't doing enough of...something else I could beat myself up about or point to and say "See, if you'd just been praying more this would not have happened." This attitude towards prayer got a radical transformation when I heard one sentence that changed my life forever. While attending my first Christian conference, speaker Becky Tirabassi said this

"Prayer is a two-way conversation, one in which you talk to God and then you listen to God speak to you."

To think that the God that ran the universe might have specific things to say to me was a completely new idea. Having been raised in the church I always knew intellectually that God loved me and that Jesus died for my sins but somewhere along the way I adopted the attitude that "God's pretty busy so if I need anything it better be important, I'll need to make it quick and I certainly can't expect a response anytime soon." Now, with the uttering of this new sentence and concept rolling around in my mind I was being taught something entirely different. I was being taught that the Lord not only loves me and knows me intimately but that He longs for me to love Him and know Him intimately and to approach Him with an expectation to hear from Him. Speaker Becky Tirabassi went on to teach that one of the main places that I could expect to hear from the Lord was through His Word (The Bible). When I heard this my attitude about prayer became one of "If the Bible is one of the main places God is going to speak to me then why would I ever want to miss even one day of reading?!" Thus began my adventure in prayer...my two-way, ongoing dialogue with the Creator of the Universe and Author of my Faith. Interestingly enough, the season of life that I was in when I began this continual prayer conversation was when my children were babies. I write in Prayer Starters for Busy Moms "We pray without ceasing because God loves without ceasing and it is through the ACTION of prayer that this love comes ALIVE and is experienced in flesh and blood."


I believe in the power of prayer. After all, Our Heavenly Father could have used any channel he saw fit to release his power and presence on this earth and yet he chose the prayers of his people to be one the main ways it would occur. Prayer helps us see God, hear God and reflect his love and power to those around us. Prayer helps us grow in our faith ultimately helping us stand, like the little boy in France, with our arms flung wide in trust and love towards the One who loved us first.

Seeing God through Friendship

Has God ever "shown up" in your life? If someone were to ask you "where have you seen God at work in your life?" how would you answer them? My first answer to that question would be "through friendship." It was through friendship that the Lord first made himself real to me. It was through friendship that He showed me that He is near and that He cares. It was through friendship that I was first able to "Taste and see that the Lord is good" (Psalm 34:8) and that initial taste made me hungry for more.


If the "Magnificent Life" has to do with "seeing" God (which must happen before we can "reflect God"), than one of the things we need to remember is that God works through people and can oftentimes be glimpsed through the friends in our lives. Likewise, we have the distinct opportunity to offer others a glimpse of the divine as we extend our had in friendship to them.


One of the subjects you are likely to see many musings about in the months to come is this subject of friendship. Whether it is the friendship between husband and wife, between girlfriends or between children, I believe our Lord really does reveal Himself through people. I now offer you "a glimpse" from my latest book Growing Friendships (Bethany House)...


"Friends invest time in one another's lives. They make the conscious choice to 'Go out and play.' They see friendship as an invitation from God to receive what He has for them."


I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. (Revelation 3:20)


Remember when you were a little girl and you would knock on your neighbors' door and ask "Can Mary come out and play?" As a child, you made the choice to go and knock on the door, allowing your girlfriend to then decide whether or not she was going to come out to play. Not much has changed over the years. This is still the first step when it comes to "Growing Friendships." It is making the choice to "go out and play," or, in other words to choose to value friendship and to invest the time and energy it takes to "connect."


There was a time in my life when I made the choice not to go out and play. My best friend was Nancy Drew and most week-ends I could be found holed up in my attic bedroom clutching those yellow bound books. I feel sad thinking about that little girl. She didn't know what she was missing. She didn't know that she could have more laughter, joy and company in her life. She didn't realize how lonely she was, nor did she realize that wounds of rejection had entered her heart and caused her to tuck herself away with a "safe" friend.


That safe friendship found between the pages of books continued on through junior high; my library card was paper thin from overuse, my battery stash running low from many late nights spent reading under the covers.


It wasn't until after my husband and I were married and had purchased our first home that I began to realize the potential that was available to me through friendships. At that point, I began to make the weekly choice to go out and play, and this continued for a long time.


For seven years, five of us gals met together on Monday evenings at a local restaurant, occasionally mixing it up when a good "chick flick" came to town. As I reminisce about the faces around the table those first few Monday nights, I see two friends with young children, two friends that were newly pregnant and one friend that was on the career track. We all had busy lives, yet we made the choice to meet and in doing so, learned the value of intentionally setting aside the time to invest in our friendships.


We spent those Mondays talking and listening to one another, laughing LOUD and crying hard, celebrating pregnancies and births, promotions, anniversaries, birthdays and the life that happens in between. We prayed each other through marriage challenges, work challenges, and hormone challenges, and we tried our best not to judge one another when we needed to "vent" about our children challenges.


Not every Monday was a party...there were some really hard Mondays in the mix. There were times when we needed to share feelings that weren't "pretty" and discuss topics that we were in disagreement over. There were times we "missed" each other and had to ask for forgiveness and there were times when we lost our temper and felt like giving up on friendship entirely. Still, by the grace of God, we chose to continue to "go out and play."


As a circle of friends, we made a huge investment of time in our relationship and the dividends were enormous. I can honestly say that that "Monday Night Lifeline" helped me in more ways than I am even now aware of. My girlfriends showed me what grace, forgiveness and loyalty were all about and they helped me enjoy the season of life that I was in.


Were there times in those years when we had other things we needed to do on a Monday night, like chores, work, or catch up on sleep? Of course! But friendship is a choice and there are many reasons why it is a choice worth making.

The Deeper Meaning

It was the week following my very first writer’s conference and I had a job to do. I had to turn a twenty minute talk into a book proposal (a sixty plus page document that includes three sample chapters, a full table of contents and several other marketing documents…basically a business plan for your book idea that will convince a publisher to invest an exorbitant amount of money in you) and I was frozen in fear….no, that’s not quite right, I was stuck in a cycle of shallow breathing, bouts of extreme nausea, and heart palpitations. While this cycle repeated itself over and over, a cadence of specific sentences began to sound like a rap in my head…


What were you thinking?
You don’t know how to write a book!
You’re going to look like an idiot!
Why did you tell the publishers about this idea…you’re not a writer…you don’t even know what a book proposal is?!

You get the idea…it was a bad scene and when I actually approached the computer the voices in my head would swell to a fevered pitch…

I don’t know how to write a book!
I don’t know how to write a book!
I DON'T KNOW HOW TO WRITE A BOOK!

That’s when the picture of the little boy came to my mind and a firm and loving voice called for my attention. It was one of those times that I sensed the Lord had something to say and He didn't want me to miss it...

“Tracy, I know how to write a book! All that I am asking you to do is to come and talk to me each day…come and be with me…come and worship me. Moment by moment, I want you to do what that little boy in the picture is doing…come and stand open armed and empty handed in front of me. That’s all. Pull up to the computer and think of it as the place you are coming to stand open armed and empty handed. Tracy, as you do that I, your Father, will fill your hands with the seed that will satisfy not only your soul but the soul of a love-starved world. I will tell you what to write. I will give you what you need.”

Immediately, I went to find the photo album from our dream trip to France. I dusted off the cover and pulled out the picture of the boy. I taped the picture to the wall above my computer so that I could see it every day. It helped me. It reminded me of the verse that, years before had so radically changed my life… “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33) And, while I did have setbacks…crying jags and mantras of failure repeating in my head every few hours, they never lasted for very long, that is if I obediently pulled up to the computer and remembered that the only thing God was asking me to do was to come to him open armed and empty handed.


A few weeks later I had a completed book proposal and, a few weeks after that a book contract and, a few months after that a completed manuscript and shortly thereafter my first book Prayer Starters for Busy Moms—How to Pray All Day and Still Put the Laundry Away.

Now, lest you think this blog is going to be all about writing, publishing and the likes I would like to clarify….I am planning to write about how we as moms can live a “Magnificent Life.” I define “The Magnificent Life” as a life that sees and senses God at work and reflects God to those around us. I believe that is achieved only as we stand, with the simple faith of a child before our Heavenly Father and trust that our lives are in His hands and that He is not only in control of everything but that He loves us and has our best interest in mind. Perhaps you now find yourself asking "How do I do that?" How do I stand there with faith, with trust especially if I've have been hurt by people or by the circumstances of life? How do I believe that God is close by if I’ve only been raised to think that He is far off and much too busy dealing with the bigger problems in the world like poverty, AIDS, and war? How do I stand there and wait on my Heavenly Father to give me what I need if I’ve always needed to figure things out on my own and make my life happen? How?

That, my friends, is precisely what this blog is about…the how, the why, the sometimes fun, oftentimes messy, always meaningful process of living life... “The Magnificent Life.”

Open Armed and Empty Handed

Dreams of France and Pictures of Life

I had a big dream when I was a little girl and when I began dating the man that would soon become my husband I shared that dream with him…creatively. We had only been dating for a few weeks when I asked Russ this question…

“If money were no object and you could go anywhere in the world where would you go?”

Now, perhaps it is because I am a woman or perhaps because when I asked him the question my then-boyfriend gave me the “You’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me look” nevertheless I went first and answered the question with a plethora of reasons why Paris was my dream destination. Once my soliloquy was complete I repeated the all important question…“If money were no object and you could go anywhere in the world where would you go?” Without skipping a beat (because by this time he’d had plenty of time to think about it while he listened to me drone on and on about the fabulousness of France) his one word response was “Cooperstown.” Apparently he really likes baseball! (For those of you who, like I needed to be enlightened, Cooperstown New York is home to the Baseball Hall of Fame) And thus began the relationship between the enthusiastic, dreamer, somewhat neurotic, aerobics instructor and the down to earth, dependable, faithful-with-the-little-things engineer.

It was during our tenth year of marriage that Russ came home from work late one night, sat down next to me on the edge of our bed and informed me that in a few months time there was the distinct possibility that he would need to leave the country for a business conference and if we could work it out I just might be able to join him…in France! As I took off running, jumping and screaming around the bedroom I could hear his voice trail off “Now Tracy, don’t get too excited…”

In no time I was visualizing and studying all the places we would be visiting while in France… the Eiffel Tower, the Champs D’Elysee, and that famous Cathedral “Notre Dame.” The more I thought about our trip, the higher my expectations rose.

The culmination of years of dreaming finally arrived. We’d landed on French soil and were quickly approaching our first tourist attraction “The Notre Dame.” As we came upon that famous cathedral I fully expected to be “blown away” by the magnificence of the stained glass, the beauty of the frescoes, the intricacy of the architecture and the fierce faces of the famous Gargoyles that sit atop the towers, but as we walked up to the Cathedral what I was OVERCOME by was a humble vision, “a little thing” that caught me out of the corner of my eye…

Standing in front of one of the many gardens that lead up to the Notre Dame was a little boy of about twelve. With the hedges of the garden below him he stood with both arms outstretched in front of him. As he stood there, palms turned up to the sky, his father, standing next to him would reach into a bag, draw out a handful of seed and pour it into the boys’ hands. As long as the boy stood there with his hands open and his arms outstretched, tiny little birds would fly down and eat the seed…right out of his hand! And, as long as the boy stood there with his arms outstretched and his palms up, his father would continue to fill his hands.

I was absolutely riveted by this image; struck to the core by the beauty of it and, sensing that there was something greater going on here, a deeper meaning that I would need to remember, I brought out my camera and took a picture of that father and his son.

There I was in Paris, living one of the biggest dreams of my life and yet the first image I felt necessary to capture on film, the first thing that “took my breath away” was a simple, humble, relational moment between a father and his son.

I developed that picture and stored it in an album along with all the other photos from our trip. It stayed there for a few years until one day when the meaning of that image came into focus at which time I gave that picture a place of prominence in my home and in my life…