Category: Prayer

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Broken boys

Oh Lord – he’s 10.
He’s 10 with a broken brain.
Can you mend a 10 year old broken brain?
Of course you can. I know that. But will you?
Would you?

Oh Lord he’s 10.
Or 11.
Maybe he was 10 when he did it and 11 now.
But his brain got broken a long time ago.

This doesn’t just ‘happen’
Are you in the business of mending broken brains?
Sometimes I don’t think so.
But what if that’s because we only see the ones that didn’t get mended.
– or haven’t yet.

What if you’ve mended more brains that we could ever know
Because we haven’t seen the effects of the brokenness?

Oh Lord, he’s 10. Or 11.
Does it even matter?

You Who dwells outside of our now – do you see the man he ‘is’ in a simple pivot of the line of time? Is he a monster? Is he fixable?

Oh Lord – a broken boy.
Please God might you mend him?

Might you put your people around him to help him heal?
Would you protect others in the now, and in the future, from the spread of this specific sadness?

Would you?
Oh Lord he’s 10.

So many fearful others, so sure of the ‘should haves’.
And would I be too in their position?

Oh Lord – the other broken boy.
Heal, protect, love, tear down, build up, surround and restore.
How long oh Lord.
How long.
He’s 8.

Oh Lord.

Written after one boy abused another at a local school.

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Remembrance

I almost never open this box, though I keep it close, as I know the contents and all they summarize will reduce me to a puddle. And every year before his birthday I wonder about posting – and mostly I do – but mostly not much – as his story is not fully my own, yet his story so completely a part of me.

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More than three ways

Something churchy I’ve picked up over the years is that God answers prayer in three ways… that He either says “yes”, “no” or “wait”. I see an incompleteness in this idea… it is so very tidy –and it defines prayer as asking God FOR stuff. Maybe His answers are as diverse as the types of conversations we have with Him and certainly as diverse as those with any OTHER friend. I mean, regular friends often just hang out together and listen to each other and He is certainly not less than that.

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A walking prayer

A friendly young voice called out while serving at the register beside me “Hello Mrs McEwan! How are you?” I looked across seeing a hint of familiarity but having to admit (with a smile and a ‘hello’ first) that I couldn’t recognise him. He told me his name and a heap of context whizzed through my mind as I looked at this tall and smiling young man that I hadn’t seen since being about 3 feet tall. He had to serve another customer so I thanked him for saying hello, told him it made me so happy that he had – and asked him to say ‘hey’ to his mum for me.

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Scary prayers

Reasons God doesn’t answer our prayers. The standard human responses to that question are that He will answer with either a ‘yes’, a ‘no’, or a ‘wait’. There have been many prayers I’ve prayed that I have not seen the answers I desired to see. Many. Some I have still not reached a place of peace about… either because someone I love died, or because I’m still currently waiting and hoping.

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Gran’ma and her prayers

I only have one memory of spending one on one time with my Gran’ma. I have heaps and heaps of wider family memories, but just the one with her by myself. I must have been in primary school at the time as I was left with her for the day while I was sick and Mum had to go do something. I was looking at a piece of her handwriting and noticed the differences between her style of cursive and my own. I loved the old fashioned ‘f’s’ and ‘t’s’ and ‘r’s’ in particular and got her to show me how to form them. She sat so patiently with me and showed me over and over and over how to do them, until I got the flow of it and from that day forward, I started incorporating what she taught me into the way I wrote. The extra curls and swirls were much more artistic than the way that I knew.

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