Prayer of a Different Variety

There is a paragraph in Shauna Niequist's book, Cold Tangerines, that just makes me laugh when I look back. It is about the prayers she prayed the days following the birth of her first child. She wrote:

"So I prayed out loud, fervently, like I was at a revival. Dear God, please please please keep our baby healthy and alive through the night. Thank you thank you thank you for him and please please please keep him safe through the night. I wasn't creative in my language, but what I lacked in vocabulary, I made up for in intensity."

I laugh, because that was me when I brought Spencer home from the hospital. Then when Leah came home, my prayer became a little bit more about me. Something like, "Please please please let her sleep, so that I can sleep and feel half way normal again."

This time around, they sound different, but are still pleading prayers. They are certainly more wordy, not only because there are so many more pieces to pray about, but because I'm not sleep deprived and hormonal. My please please please prayer is that he and his nanny have a sweet and tender relationship and that N feels loved. I please please please pray that God is holding him and that, again, N feels loved. I also pray for his last piece of paperwork to be submitted to court so that we can get assigned a court date before the courts close, that we can get him formula, which they are evidently running low at his orphanage, that there are no complications or roadblocks in our process, that he is developing wonderfully, that we will bond, that they take him outside and play with him, that we get to bring him home before Christmas, that he stays healthy and that God is already beginning to sew our hearts together, etc. . . .

In the same chapter of Shauna's book she says (and I feel the same way right now), I also believe in God because I have to, because I need someone to pray to with my rabid, sweeping mix of fear and love. I have to believe in something else, I think, or I'd lose my mind. I think I would blow a fuse in my brain every night if I couldn't entrust (N) to God for safekeeping while I sleep.