She said it at the table, and she said it well, which is the part that makes it impossible to be angry about.
She was not shouting. She had thought about it. She said, Mum, I know you mean it kindly, and I am asking you not to pray for me, because every time you say you are praying for me I hear that you think there is something wrong with me.
And then she said, and this is the bit that goes round at night: it makes me feel like a project.
That was in February.
Since then her daughter has been round three times, which is more than the three months before, and they have talked about work and a boiler and somebody's wedding, and it has been good, and neither of them has mentioned it again.
And every single day, in the car, on the way back from the shop, her mother says her name out loud.
She has not told her. Obviously she has not told her.
And here is what she cannot resolve, and it is not guilt exactly, it is closer to a legal problem. Was that a boundary, and is she crossing it? Is she doing something behind her daughter's back?
She has gone round this so many times that she has stopped being able to hear her own reasoning. And there is a version of the question that arrives at three in the morning and is harder: what if the praying is the thing that has been pushing her away?
Graven upon the palms of My hands
Sit down at the table, in the same chair, because there is a line in Isaiah that will do two things at once here, and the second one is the one you need.
Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of My hands; thy walls are continually before Me.Isaiah 49:16
Graven upon the palms of My hands.
Now hear where that is aimed. It is said to somebody who has just said that the Lord has forsaken and forgotten them. It is said over a people who are not, at that moment, in a good relationship with the One saying it.
Their name is on His hands anyway. Not as a plan for them. Not as a project. As a fact about Him.
Hear this in your kitchen. Your daughter's name is not on your list, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture puts a name on the palms of God's hands whether or not the person is in the room, and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds her there, and He was holding her there long before February and long before you.
Now let me answer the legal question, because you have been circling it since February and it does have an answer.
What did she ask you to stop?
She told you what happens when you say you are praying for her. Every time you say. That is what is in the sentence, and it is worth reading it exactly as she gave it to you, because she chose her words carefully and she is not a careless person, and the Holy Spirit is as precise with a written line as she was with a spoken one.
She asked you to stop making her the subject of a report. That is a real request, and it is a reasonable one, and it is about a conversation, and you can honor it completely.
She did not ask you to stop loving her in the presence of God, and she could not have, and there is no world in which a mother could agree to that.
Hear this too, and let it settle the three in the morning. You are not doing something behind her back, and Scripture is what says so. What is written puts every name continually before Him, and the Spirit of God is the one carrying what you say in a car, and none of that is an action taken against a person.
And now the question that arrives at three in the morning, because it deserves a straight answer.
What if the praying pushed her away.
The praying did not. What she described is the telling, and the telling is a different act, and I want you to see the difference plainly because it is the whole of it: one of them happens between you and God, and the other one happens between you and her.
You have already stopped the second one. You stopped in February and you have kept it for months and she has been round three times, and the written word never asked for more than that, and the Holy Spirit has been at work in every one of those visits.
So the answer the written word gives to the three in the morning is that you have already done the thing she asked, the Holy Spirit is already bearing exactly the fruit she was hoping for, and you did not have to give up the car for it.
So today, in the car, you say her name.
And then you change one thing, and it is small and it will alter what happens in you.
Do not ask for anything. Not this week. Say her name and then bless her: name what is good in her out loud, in the car, to God, the way the written word blesses before it ever requests, with the Holy Spirit carrying it. She is funny. She is more courageous than you were at her age. She rang the day the boiler went and stayed on the phone for an hour.
Because that is the difference between carrying somebody and working on them, and you have known that difference all along, and the request in February was about the second one.
The written word says the name is graven on the palms of His hands, and the Holy Spirit is the one holding her there, and none of that was ever your project.
And say nothing to her. Not out of secrecy, but because she asked, and because a woman who is not being reported on comes round three times in three months.
Declare this over yourself
Say these in the car with the engine off. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds her name according to the written word, so the standing you speak from was never built out of anything you can arrange. Whether she comes back to what you hope for or never does, the outcome is His to decide, and it is never a measure of how you prayed in a car.
- Kitchen table, you are not the end of anything and you did not close a door I hold. The Word of God says I have graven thee upon the palms of My hands and thy walls are continually before Me, and He said it over people who had just told Him He had forgotten them.
- Three in the morning that asks whether the praying pushed her away, get out of this car, in the name of Jesus. Scripture puts a name before Him continually, and the Spirit of God is the one carrying it, and what she asked me to stop was the telling and I stopped it in February.
- Lord, You are the God with her name cut into Your palms, and Your Spirit has held her there since long before I did. I am saying her name out loud in the car today and blessing her with nothing asked for, and I am not saying a word about it to her.
Isaiah 49:16
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