I Bet I Was A Prayer Request Just Like That When I Was 13 Years Old (The Rich Tapestry of God’s Providence)

If you haven’t read this Tim Challies’ post, you really should. It is wonderful!

It reminds me of five minutes I spent with a woman at my church after our service. She had given a prayer request during the service for a thirteen year-old girl she knows whose life situation is utterly chaotic: addict mother, no stable home, might have to move out of state to live with a father who has had no contact with her in years. This dear woman was not only concerned, she was trying to discern the role (if any) she and her her husband should play in this child’s life.

I told her that I would bet anything that two decades ago, Christians stood up in churches and gave prayer requests just like that—for me. That looking back now at my life and when God saved me (my freshman year of high school—yes, that’s really me all the way to the right in the photo above, circa 1980’s), I have absolutely no doubt that Christians had been praying for me and having various levels of influence in my chaotic life:

A friend in Kindergarten who let me go to church with them once or twice
A particularly kind Girl Scout leader
A band teacher who took the time to encourage me when I was at an all-time low
Parents of teen friends who gave me rides, listened to me, and told me they were praying for me
A health teacher who allowed kids to gather in her room after school to pray (and friends who asked us “How can we pray for you?”)
Friends who invited me to “church stuff”
A man and a woman (much like the Challies’ story) who I only saw on one night who listened to me, answered my questions, and then opened the Scriptures to me and prayed with me—and I was saved
Multiple English teachers, all with quiet, beautiful, radiant lives for Christ that I longed to understand and emulate
Paul and Donna Livingston who let me live with them for 18 very painful (for them!) months (painful because I was so wounded, so scared, so incapable of loving or being loved, that they just had to persevere in letting me live in their home event though they wouldn’t get to love and be loved by me for YEARS afterward)

I told this woman yesterday that sometimes we can be afraid to have ANY input into a troubled person’s life (especially a troubled child’s life) because we feel like, “If I can’t feed, clothe, adopt, basically provide EVERYTHING to this child, then maybe I shouldn’t try to do ANYTHING for this child.” But the truth, is, her prayers and asking the saints to pray are worth far more than we can ever imagine. Plus, I encouraged her to be bold and tell this child that there IS a God and that He is sovereign and good. And that even though this child’s suffering is great, that doesn’t mean God doesn’t care.

I told her that the child’s life situation might be such that she isn’t even allowed to reach out again until she is 18 years old. But that a letter (or email or FaceBook contact) might come in five years saying, “Tell me more about this God Who is good and in control.” Because that’s exactly what happened in my life. I heard inklings of Truth as a child and I longed to know more. And (thankfully!) people told me more. And here I am today, a very different woman than I would have been were it not for these dear saints along the way.

The rich tapestry of God’s providence. Indeed.

Rejoicing in the Truth,
Tara B.