Courage and Prayer: We Begin on Our Knees

Almost everyone who knows me, knows I grew up in a home with a mom who prayed. Every morning, my mom gets up and unfolds her Bible, opens her journal, and spends time talking to God. It’s all I’ve known. In all my travels and living in other places, whenever I stay with my mom, I take solace in the knowledge that when I wake, the house will already be filled with the early morning fragrance of a humble heart communing with God.

My mother is fairly quiet about the things she prays for. Prayer is one of the most private things about a person. She doesn’t go on and on about who and what she’s talking to God about, but from time to time, she’ll share some answer to her prayers, or she’ll come across something in her journal that will reveal the interconnectedness of all things, or tangible evidence of the mercy of God, or the gracious way God revealed his favor and provision. It’s always so creative and I find it settling the way God works, which is usually slow and arduous, over a long period of time … God hasn’t received the memo about the importance of immediacy. (God is still clinging to the idea that change over time produces the most lasting results. Time and Grace are what make transformation sustainable.)

Anyways, I’ve written about my mother, and am so grateful for her authentic and lasting life with God. What I haven’t written much about, is that my grandmother also had a rich prayer life.

My grandparents would drive up from Louisiana to visit us about once a year. They had an old silver Honda Accord, and would stay with us for three to four weeks. Their visits were great gifts to my family and we longed for their presence. Granny would tell stories she’d make up and re-tell delightful southern fables that mesmerized me. She’d help me and my sisters get organized, and sort through our things. She’d make dinner every night. PawPaw, my grandfather, would make the best homemade bread ever, along with a lasagna to die for. He would wake up early in the morning and watch Good Morning America on a tiny little television set he’d pack in his Honda. I thought it was the coolest television ever.

Granny wore fake fur coats, and had beautiful white hair, and walked with the elegance of a queen. She was tiny, not much more than five feet tall and took a nap every afternoon. She’d change into her pajamas and slip into bed like she was going down for the night and wake a couple hours later, ready for the evening. She played the piano and sang. She wrote and read voraciously. She was also quite ahead of her time with interracial issues and women’s rights. More than anything, she as a formidable matriarch. She was a woman who inspired hope wherever she went. 

As a girl, I didn’t realize she had much of a faith. She went to a Methodist church in her hometown and conducted the choir for much of her life, but she didn’t talk about Jesus the way my mom did, so I wrote her off as less spiritual.

Until one day … 

I was living in a small apartment with my mom and sisters when my grandparents came to visit. I was newly committed to my own faith and absolutely on fire for God. I was trying to wake up at 5:30 in the morning to pray. One Saturday, I spent the morning talking to my granny about all the things going on in my life and how I had found God and how God was changing my life, etc … She listened with intense interest and made me feel important. She affirmed me in a thousand ways. Then, at the end of our talk in the kitchen, she suggested we pray. I agreed. She was sitting on a rocking chair in the middle of the kitchen, and got down off her chair to kneel in front of the seat, which surprised me.

My mouth dropped open and I said, “We’re going to kneel?”

“Well, Tina,” she said, like I was as slow as a snail. “How else do we come to heaven’s gates?” 

After I got over the initial shock of our posture, and could focus on her prayers, I realized how little I knew about my grandmother. I had no idea who that woman was kneeling in front of the rocking chair. It was apparent in her first few minutes talking to God just how much time she spent kneeling, and how well acquainted she was with The Almighty. They were quite close, I’d say …

I never forgot that morning with my granny, nor have I forgotten what I learned about prayer. It’s secret, but also has a kind of public component to it. There is a public authority that comes from having a secret life of prayer.

My granny didn’t tell many people about her quiet life before God, either does my mom. But both of them learned early on in life, that some things are beyond us. And it is good they are beyond us. They are bigger and weightier and difficult to control. We see our children in need, we watch our country suffer, we feel the weight of powerlessness over painful things in our lives and in the lives of our loved ones … and these women figured out where to begin. It’s not that my granny wasn’t also a woman of action. She was. She knew how to get a job done. How to act. How to speak boldly when necessary. But, she started in a secret place, she started in a private place of prayer and her action stemmed from there. Maybe that’s what makes a good matriarch. A woman who knows where her true power stems from …

Someone may ask … how do I even start to have a prayer life like that? Where do I begin? Maybe it’s too late, they think … No. It’s not. You begin where you are.

And … If granny knew anything at at all, she knew …

We begin on our knees. 

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