You know, the very best moments are the ordinary ones. The moments that slip in and out of your life everyday carrying remnants of answered prayers and once longed for dreams.
I got married when I was 23 years old and by the end of the first year of marriage, I was ready to be a mom. I stopped taking birth control pills and began dreaming of a twirling mobile of miniature ballet shoes or baseball mitts hanging over a tidy crib.
Except it didn’t happen.
I didn’t get pregnant- not for that year or the next three years after it. In all, it was a five-year journey of wondering what was wrong with me, questioning my desires, my God and my future. I silently suffered as each month ended with an empty womb and the hope of being a mom sunk into the shadowed crevices of unanswered prayers. I gave brittle smiles to congratulate the friends and strangers who were getting pregnant and having babies all around me and pushed on.
Many years later, I had this moment: I was sitting with my family inside an empty restaurant on a cold autumn afternoon in California with the wind whipping the golden red trees outside. My husband and I sat on one side of the table and our two boys sat on the other side. Justin was 11 years old and Kyle was 9. It was after school and we were there to use two free pizza coupons that the boys got at school for reaching 100% of their reading goal. Both boys struggled with reading and they had to work hard to do it. It was definitely a moment worth celebrating.
As we waited for the pizzas to come to the table, Bobby and Justin were playing digital Battleship on our iPhones while Kyle and I watched. They each had an iPhone in their hands and were trying to guess where the other one had placed his ships so that they could bomb them out of the water. Justin was having so much fun that he was making these hilarious faces, ones where his eyebrows went way up as he tried really hard not to smile as Bobby got close to guessing where Justin’s ships were. It made Bobby laugh and soon we were all cracking up and enjoying each other.
Suddenly that ordinary moment lit me up on the inside with the sweet surprise of recognition. It was a moment of sincere smiles, joy in each other and an answer to a prayer that I had breathed years before when I thought that being a mom was not in the cards for me.
So I basked in it…and thanked God for it.
Nothing is impossible with God.
The journey to impossible takes longer than you expect, is harder than you can imagine and always looks different than you thought it would.
Some who dream of motherhood become caretakers to the motherless and are mothers just the same. Some who dream of companionship bring friendship to the lonely and joy to God’s forgotten ones but are companions nonetheless.
We can be living in the whispers of answered prayers and miss them. I know I did. Long nights with a colicky baby, an active toddler and no sleep made me question my sanity and left no energy for awareness.
In the hard work of life and the monotony of the daily grind it is so easy for these moments to slip by unheeded. Unrecognized.
The anxiety of new crisis can quickly swallow the echoes of the answered prayers you are living today and steal your joy like a weasel robbing the hen house.
But Jesus is there through it all.
One of the sweetest parts of walking with Jesus is having the Holy Spirit in your life. He gives you strength when you are tired, guidance when you are lost and can illuminate your every day ordinary moments so that you can see when you are living answered prayers.
If you are struggling today and in a season of waiting or wondering if God hears the prayers, He does.
I want to encourage you today to take a moment and ask Jesus to bring you a fresh awareness of His presence. Ask Him to help you see the prayers He has already answered, especially when answers look so vastly different than you thought they would.
Ask Him to help you slow down and feel them. It will refresh your hope and recharge your courage. You can trust Jesus to bring your current impossible situation into the realm of His will.
My friend, my prayer for you today is the same one that the apostle Paul ended his second letter to the Corinthian church with:
“May the amazing grace of the Master, Jesus Christ, the extravagant love of God, the intimate friendship of the Holy Spirit, be with all of you”.
2 Corinthians 13:14 MSG
The very best moments are the ordinary ones experienced through the power of the Holy Spirit. The moments that slip in and out of your life everyday carrying remnants of answered prayers and once longed for dreams.
May you know them all.
– Cindy Grasso