Greetings from my car, parked in my garage, where I type with a stubborn 2 year old asleep in her seat behind me. After listening to Audrey yell from her crib for an hour during nap time, I strapped her in the car, put on my favorite album of the moment (The Burning Edge of Dawn by Andrew Peterson) and drove until she gave it up and fell asleep (approximately 47 seconds into the ride.) We have a big party tonight with all of our friends and I NEED her to survive a late bedtime, so I got myself a coffee, rolled down the windows, and took the two of us on a mini-vacation of a Saturday drive around our neighborhood, and then right back home. She’s snoozing in her carseat while I write behind the steering wheel, and if anyone’s wondering how moms get work done, here’s your answer.
In our cars. In the garage.

Today is Cinco De Mayo which obviously doesn’t matter one bit except for tacos and cold Pacificos (NEITHER OF WHICH I CAN HAVE BECAUSE WHOLE30 HATES FUN, but I’m on day 22, can you believe it?! I’ll write about the whole process soon.) For the Horney family, though, Cinco De Mayo means I get to dress up my son in a (low-key racist) costume and deliver his picture to the internet, which brings me a surprising amount of joy.

Then again, I’m writing this from my garage, so I guess it makes sense that the little things still bring me joy in a way that people with offices and baby-sitters (and paychecks) will never understand.

Samuel Iradell Horney V, our little Cinco, continues to amaze and confound me. He is brave beyond belief when it comes to dangerous tricks on bikes, scooters, and great heights, but he’s too scared to go downstairs by himself in the morning. According to me, he “never listens,” but according to what he spouts back and discusses with me, he listens with frightening accuracy. He is still one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen, and I still stare at his face with a clutch in my heart, just like I did when they first laid him on my chest and he looked up at me with newborn wonder. Even as he settles further into himself and becomes who he was always meant to be, there is a secret part of him that I can’t quite reach, a deep, still pool of thought and perspective that flashes in his brown eyes when he’s taking it all in. I ache for the baby I held in my arms, but I delight in the boy who folds himself into my side for a moment and then runs away, all at once completely mine and never mine at all.

Happy Cinco De Horney, friends. Here’s to the boy I never knew I needed, and the son who lights up our life. May your day be as fun as my Sammy.

Don’t laugh, but sometimes people ask me for advice. Only desperate times, I assume, would lead someone my direction for help, but it happens more and more as I get older and as I’m more vocal about my life and struggles, online and in person. It started happening so frequently, in fact, that I scheduled an appointment with a counselor to ask for advice. About giving advice. As in:
How do you counsel someone? Like, how do you know how and when to give counsel? How do you set your opinions aside and speak truth and be a leader but also a servant and do it all with grace and humility? Especially when you have no idea what you’re doing and you fully realize how ill-equipped you are to be advising anyone?

(If I ever try to schedule an appointment with you for anything at all, don’t take it. I probably have a list of impossible questions and I will definitely cry.)

I also asked my brother Robert all of these questions, because he is a pastor and also one of my best friends and I go to him for all of my own advice needs. He said something interesting, a thought that echoed what my counselor said:

People don’t need your advice.

Even when they ask for advice, they’re not really asking for advice.

They need your imagination.

People do not need a prescription for their problems:  They need a new story to tell. And when the story is stuck, we help each other build a way out. 

From the moment we first breathe our mother’s scent, as we learn what love will mean in our lives, for good or for bad; through childhood; as adults; in memory keeping and future dreaming- more than anything else, we are story-tellers. Whether you know it or not, you are constructing a narrative around every relationship, situation, and dilemma you face. It’s how we rationalize bad behavior (and my, how early we learn to spin the facts), it’s how we justify the secrets we keep, it’s how we choose the face we present to the world, it’s in the information we guard or share too freely- our story is all we have to tell, so we learn to adjust the story according to our own comfort and other people’s reaction. We learn to tell it not like it is, but rather, how we’d like it to be perceived. How it makes the most sense to us.

And then when we’re lost, or blinded by our limitations, or afraid to make the wrong move, we ask for advice. We are standing at a crossroads and although we think we’re asking for help making a decision, what we actually need is help understanding our story. We need a new map. We need an architect with a plan, not a wizard with a magic solution.

The difference between giving advice and being an architect lies in the art of curiosity. As Brene Brown puts it, “Choosing to be curious is choosing to be vulnerable because it requires us to surrender to uncertainty.” What makes me so uncomfortable about giving advice is the absoluteness of it: They ask, you answer, and there’s no room for imagining all the possibilities. There’s no room for growth. When I ask my brother for advice he doesn’t give a five-point answer to success- he almost always just asks me his own questions. The maturity of the architect is to say, “I don’t know if I know the answer. But I’d love to puzzle it out with you.” There is a vulnerability that comes with allowing yourself to not be right or definitive, but rather, sitting with someone in their pain or uncertainty, refusing the inclination to shoo it away with cliches or by spouting off your own experiences. An architect does not serve up platitudes or prideful examples of their wisdom; they listen, they ask questions, and they imagine what could come next for the story at hand.

An architect also understands this fundamental truth: We cannot force anyone to do anything. We can cajole, guilt, manipulate, influence, guide, direct- but we cannot write the script for each other. This is the problem with free will, if you believe in such a thing. As a parent, this shocked me most of all about raising young children- there are so many things I cannot force them to do.

-I can’t make them eat.

-I can’t make them sleep.

-I can’t make them learn.

-I can’t make them into different people.

This might sound crazy to you, and maybe I was crazy to think any of that was possible, but it’s a surprising reality check the first time your baby will. Not. Sleep. Short of drugging them, sleep is their choice. So is eating. So is learning. And in the end, while I get the great pleasure of teaching them about the world and being human, they decide who they will be.

It’s horrible.

Well, not horrible. It’s just terrifying. What little control we pretend to have disappears with each step they take towards independence. Which is the whole point, right? I want them to be independent, brave, beautiful people. I can’t make them do any of these things, but I can be their architect. I build a way for them to eat good food, by making good food and eating it with them. I design a way for them get enough sleep by taking them outside every day to play, and putting them to bed early enough each night. I offer a scaffold up to learning by reading aloud to them, exploring with them, by telling them what I’m learning and praying it informs the story they’re telling themselves about education. I can’t write their script, but I can be intentional about mine.

We cannot make each other different people through parenting, advice-giving, guilt-heaping or manipulating. It’s impossible and it’s not our job. We are the architects. As friends, as parents, as spouses and human beings, we stay curious about each other. We explore together. And when someone asks for advice, we don’t lecture or press; we ask our own questions. We invent and dream. We draw blueprints, maps, stories or models, and then we watch each other build and grow.

When I look in the proverbial mirror, it seems outrageous that anyone would want my opinion or advice. The long trail of failures and lost initiatives behind me are a dramatic indicator of my lack of credentials. But when I consider my story, and the power of a vulnerable interaction with a person who trusts me, I reconsider my strengths. Can I listen? Can I humbly ask questions? Can I invest time and energy in someone without demanding a certain loyalty to my way of thinking?

Can I be an architect instead of a sage? I pray it becomes true of me. Along with wisdom and humility, I pray for imagination and curiosity, a heart bent towards better stories and deeper connections instead of the pride of being right.

When I wrote this letter to myself three years ago, I had two objectives every day.

1. Keep my 1 year old and 3 year old alive and well.
2. Keep a small piece of myself alive in the shuffle.

I graduated from college when I was 36 weeks pregnant with my second child, and didn’t go back to work after he was born. After working various jobs for 13 years, and then finishing my degree in the chaos of having my first two kids, the dormancy of staying home bewildered me. I felt like I’d jumped through a series of flaming hoops and finished a complex obstacle course of my own design, only to land on the other side of the wall to absolute silence. No applause. No obvious successes. No promises of greatness. Just motherhood, a new obstacle course; one I didn’t design, fully understand, or value.

But I learned. Mothering takes me to the end of myself every single day. But when I manage to surrender to the joy of the process rather than simply bemoaning the pain of the growth, I edge closer to the art of keeping the kids alive and keeping myself intact, too.

I wrote this letter 3 years ago to remember the exhaustion of nights with babies, but also to protect the memory of our deeply interlocked existence in those days, a connection I know will never exist again. It’s already gone. Of course there are new connecting points now, new conversations and jokes, a new relationship with them as a 4 and 5 year old. That relationship allows the shadow of our old life together to fade into our minds like the sweet lullabies we used to sing but, sadly, can no longer recall. Sometimes I ache for those days, and sometimes I barely think about them. But they existed. And they were important. And I’m so glad I wrote this letter to capture  a moment in time that shaped me, and them, through that simple but exhausting obstacle course of early parenthood.

Dear Jessie,

Someday you will miss that robe at the end of your bed.

Someday you will miss that pink robe draped over your bed covers. The one worn thin by round baby cheeks pressed against you in sleep. The one with the left shoulder constantly caked with spit up or animal cracker or drool, that left shoulder where so many nights and early mornings you invited a sleepy head to rest. You wear that robe like a cape some nights, tossing it on as you rush to save a crying baby. You are not even completely awake, but you know the tone of their cries, you know the sound of their breaths, you know something is wrong even through the walls of your house. You are not a hero, but to them? In those long and dark midnight hours of pushing through new teeth, painful winter coughs, or that restless newborn confusion: you are everything they ever wanted. You are mommy. In her pink robe. Warm and quiet and soft, swaying in the ancient dance of motherhood that has rocked civilizations to sleep since Eve held her boys to her breast. You are home, you and that robe.

Someday, I promise, you will miss feeling tiny hands climb over you and into your bed. You will be more rested, I think, when these days pass, but your bed might feel bigger than necessary without those warm, wiggling bodies twisting between their tired parents. You will miss her curls, his chubby feet, their dreaming fingers fluttering in deep slumber.

I know you’re tired. I know you are so, so tired. It’s ok. These are hard nights. It’s hard to be woken up, it’s hard to always be a parent, even in the middle of the night, even when you are exhausted. It’s hard to be kind in the morning after you slept on the couch with a sick baby, or when two-year old molars were coming in all night, or when no one has slept well for a week. It’s hard to wake up and make breakfast and say “Good morning, babies,” and be patient when people are fussing on a really good day, much less on a really tired day. But you’re doing good. Good job for apologizing when you snapped at them for whining. Good job for knowing you needed to take the kids to see their cousins this morning when you couldn’t handle saying “NO” one more time by 9 am. That’s good. You’re not a hero, remember. You wear a pink cape that rests on the edge of your bed and you pray all day long for more of whatever it is that makes God love you and your fussing so much, and that’s great. That’s it, that’s all you need. Because He knows. He sees you. He will bear with you, and teach you to bear with them, and He will show them love through you, at all hours of the day. That’s good.

And remember, ok, remember this when the days seem impossible, or you are almost afraid of how happy you are to be their mom, or you just can’t remember how to be a mom at all: remember that life is meant to be interrupted. Your broken sleep is merely a reflection of this breaking inside you, as your old way of life is interrupted and a new, thick thread weaves it way through your story. You won’t be the same anymore. You aren’t meant to be, after these babies come. This thread is pulling, tugging, changing your tapestry in ways you cannot imagine. It’s gonna hurt sometimes. It’ll feel too tight. It’ll feel wrong, this piercing, tugging thread of motherhood. But it’s just right. These minutes filled with the needs of others, filled with the clatter of disruption and disorder; they are the thread that is hemming in your story and creating the rest of you. 

Because these precious, beloved children of yours? They won’t be here forever. In fact, they’ll leave soon. Someday they will sneak past your bedroom door instead of through it. Someday you will throw on that robe to answer midnight phone calls instead of cries, to whisper advice instead of lullabies. You will still be you, changed by their very heartbeats, and they will still be them, hearts beating outside of your grasp and in a world all their own. Don’t lose yourself in these tired nights. Don’t forget the astonishing joy of being their everything, nor the price you pay to raise someone well, nor the woman beneath the robe who exists beyond the nursery door, in a world all her own. Remember that the thread of motherhood is a part of your story; but not the very end. Remember that these babies and their needs are a gift, and will not last forever. Remember that the love in their eyes is saved for no one else.

Someday you will miss that pink robe on the edge of your bed. You won’t miss being woken up all night, or feeling hung over with exhaustion, or planning your sex life around a nap schedule. You won’t miss being thrown up on or changing wet pants or the onslaught of questions and requests that begins every morning at sunrise. But you will miss this simple kind of tired. The one that means you are doing your job well. The one that goes away with sleep. There will be new kinds of tired, you know? As these babies grow up, and hurt themselves or others, you will not be able to sleep away the pain you share with them. And when those days come; when you feel lost and hurt and wonder how on earth you can ever help them find their way again; remember that a long time ago, you held them tight and loved them well. You kept a robe waiting at the end of your bed so you could hurry to meet their needs, and that kind of love will dig into them. It will grow with them. It will teach them to love others and to love themselves.

These midnight hours matter. These tired days matter.

You and your babies are going to be ok.
Tomorrow morning,
and all the mornings after.

*originally published January 2015

Hey, friends! I haven’t blogged straight atcha for a long while- it feels weird to write directly to you again. I’ve missed this! I’ve missed writing normal, boring, funny, every day mom stuff on here. This blog is 5 1/2 years old (always the same age as Clara, that precious first child who actually had entire blogs written about her milestones, not just tapped out Instagram posts…sorry Sam and Audrey). As a celebration of all these millions of words we’ve shared together, I want to do something fun for the month of May, and Mother’s Day.

You ready for this?

You’re going to get a blog EVERY SINGLE DAY this month.

Except yesterday. Lay off me.

Some will be oldies, classic HMTA posts, ones you may have loved or even may have tragically missed over the years. And some will be brand spanking new (although zero will be about spanking, because I don’t want you to break up with me). The new ones are a few essays, a few day-to-day observation posts, and a lot of OG Horney Mom style good times, mostly at my own expense.

Excited yet?

Here’s the thing: I’m sure if you’ve ever read my blog, it’s been through a Facebook link. But Facebook has changed significantly since I started, and it’s nearly impossible to get things shared around like we all used to do. The algorithm shifted and truth be told, if you’re not following my blog as an e-mail subscriber, you’re going to miss a lot of what I write.  So sign up to be a follower over there –>> on the sidebar. I can’t wait to see you around all month!

Here’s a peek at tomorrow’s post (an old classic). Any guesses?

Dudes, this is gonna be a fun month.

-Jessie

*Got some cool news! Each month I’ll be writing a “parenting” (ha!) article for a local publication, Idaho Family Magazine, and a few weeks after it’s released I’ll post the article here as well. February 2018 was my first column, and is an adapted version of a previous blog on Horney Mom Tells All. Thanks for reading!

The Horney Village

My oldest child is five years old, so in terms of parenting advice, I’m your basic punch-line. My friends and I talk about raising our children every time we’re together, but most of us are early on in the journey, babes in the woods with nothing but our flashlights and instincts to guide us. And by instincts I mean parenting books, research articles, and stories we heard from other people. I laugh when someone asks me for advice because I know I’m about 40 years away from having any real perspective on all of this, but I also love to engage in the fray with other parents.

There’s just no way to prepare someone for parenthood. It’s like explaining what it will feel like to survive a plane crash (grateful, but mangled). At baby showers they make you go around the circle and share advice for the new mom; find out you’re pregnant and suddenly aunts have opinions, grandparents have opinions, siblings have opinions; you turn on podcasts, read parenting blogs, and think you’re gathering up everything you need to raise a child. Even during those first few years with your first child, you might think you’re nailing it. You ask yourself, “Why did everyone warn me about this? Parenting is easy.” And then maybe you even have a second baby, and for the first few months you ask yourself, “Why do people complain about their kids? Glad I know what I’m doing!” 

But I have a theory about all that parental hutzpah, that unrelenting smugness of new parents. It’s all gonna end. Whether it’s our first child that breaks us, or our second (nobody makes it to the third fully intact), our ideals will crack just like the precious organic toys we bought for our precious organic offspring who are now throwing those precious toys across the room. And there is a deep, wicked part of me that loves when parents finally have to parent, when they finally have to drag a crying child out of a store or admit publicly that their kid will only eat chicken nuggets, not all those green smoothies and avocado rolls they pinned and planned and Instagrammed. It’s not that I’m rejoicing in their pain or laughing from afar. It’s that I’m thankful for the chance to actually connect. Because it is impossible to raise children with people who won’t be honest about raising children. And honestly, we all did it. We all said we wouldn’t have a house full of toys, and that our kids would never talk to us like that, and that our babies would sleep because we would create the perfect sleeping environment, and our kids would work around our schedules, and oh my gosh, remember how dumb we were? Now that we know, let’s be fair to each other.

There’s a lot of talk lately about missing the “village,” about the loneliness of modern parents. Parenthood today isn’t a support group, it’s a beauty pageant, complete with swimsuit and talent competitions. But in all that striving to outdistance one another, we overlook the final result: Distance. We are far apart, and we are lonely. There are many reasons for this phenomenon, like our digital lives replacing personal relationships, or playing in our fenced backyards instead of out front with our neighbors, or the image we work so hard to keep up; most of our loneliness is self-induced. We know that if we let people too close, they’ll know the truth, which is, I don’t know what I’m doing. 

Yes, the village is helpful, but the village is also observant. 

I started writing my blog after my daughter was born to create an honest online space. My blog title, “Horney Mom Tells All,” wasn’t just a joke- it was true. I write about everything (while trying maintain some privacy for my children) and I am continually surprised at the response to that kind of transparency. When I write about being seen in my underwear at Albertsons or the fact that the baby’s first sentence was “That’s mean, Mama,” people aren’t just laughing: They’re relieved. When I write heartfelt posts about the dichotomy of mourning my kids’ swiftly passing childhood but also anxiously awaiting the day they stop spilling water at every meal, the halls of the internet echo with a loud “Me too!”

I believe in the village, in person and in print. But I also know what it requires. I write not just for the sake of catharsis, but for the sake of community. I won’t lie to you. I’ll let you know that nighttime at our house looks like a version of the shell game, where I wake up and have no idea who is in what bed in any room by morning. I’ll also tell you that I’ve never been more myself than I am now, joyfully struggling through this season of young motherhood with those three beautiful kids on the front cover of this magazine. If I could make a line of greeting cards for new parents, I would make one that said on the outside,”Congratulations on a lifetime of heartache!” And then on the inside, “This will be the bravest love you’ve ever known.”

I’m new to this magazine, and I’m excited for this small space each month to share about life in a way that makes you laugh, cry, and look around whatever waiting room you’re in (where you are assuredly only reading this because your phone battery is low,) and want to shout out to the strangers around you, “Me too!” (And then have to explain that you don’t mean the other “Me too.” Good luck with that.) 

See you around!

Hello, dear friends. How are your resolutions coming along? I’m doing a 30-day yoga challenge and I’m 1 for 1 on my daily practice, so… definitely crushing it. Next up: Curbing my sugar addiction.

Riiiiight after Valentine’s Day.

It’s a fresh year, you guys. What does 2018 look like for you? How do you imagine it unfolding? I’m a bundle of nerves, buzzing with ideas, and buzzing with anxiety over the ideas, but I am also firm with resolve. A lot of this is because of what I’m about to tell you. I’m nervous because saying it to you makes it real. In a swirl of contradiction, it IS actually the internet that makes things true.

I have some big news for you. And a big request.

You have supported me and encouraged me all these years as I’ve honed my writing, found my voice, and moved towards a career doing what I love. And I’ll still be writing here at Horney Mom Tells All, as well as some other places I can’t wait to tell you about, but I have something cool going on lately.

I’m writing a book. I’m writing a book! I hate exclamation points, but that’s how excited I am about this book and the topic! It’s a book about gender; specifically, a new way of talking about gender that has changed my entire life. And I think it will change yours. Since the book is sort of a whole new thing, I decided to create a new space for it, and for myself as an author. So I need you to do things:

1. Click over to www.jessiehorney.com

This is the headquarters for the book. Go to the new website! SUBSCRIBE! You can watch a video about the book, you can read an excerpt from a chapter, you can click on some of your other favorite writing from my blog, and most importantly:
YOU CAN PRE-ORDER MY BOOK.

1. Pre-order the book for $20

Ask yourself this: Has this space, has my writing, ever made you feel something? Has it touched you in some way? Have you ever felt compelled to share it with others? Has it made you think? Made you laugh? Made you cry? THEN THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU. Cause guess what? I’m crying and laughing and thinking of you the whole time I write it. Your support will help get this book into your hands!

I want to get 200 books pre-ordered before I shop the manuscript around to publishers, to make myself more appealing to their agencies. 200 is only a small fraction of you guys, my normal blog readers, but it still feels like a big number to me. Can we do it? I KNOW we can. So pre-order today! Oh and one last thing…

Anyone on the pre-order list gets invited to the book launch party! Which is gonna be killer. You get a signed copy of the book, and a chance to get crazy with me when it’s all finally finished! I throw a hell of a party, so this is reason enough to buy the book, trust me. You have until January 31 to pre-order!

Thank you so much, faithful readers and friends. You have given me confidence and motivation through good times and bad, and your faces are the ones on my mind as I tap out this book with my hands and my heart. I love you guys. This book is my love letter to us all.

www.jessiehorney.com (see you over there)

-Jessie

I’ve been married for 10 years and here is the number of times my husband has put Christmas lights up on our house:

Zero.

He doesn’t care about Christmas lights on the house, he barely even cares about Christmas, and no matter how much I love the season of lights, I’m not going to put them up on the house myself… I’ll just stay inside with my coffee, thanks though. So we’ve never had them out.

Until now. Because this year, we have the relentless persistence of a three year old and a five year old, in awe of the neighborhood light shows, wondering aloud when Daddy will put our lights up, because these relentless children cannot fathom a reason not to. So, up the lights will go, our house a cheery string of twinkling reminders that children are meant to get us off our seats and into a life we never could have imagined. Children are a decisive interruption of self; startling mirrors and joyful invitations all at once.

Christmas with my children is startling, too. Tradition doesn’t matter to a young child- it is all brand new, all open to questioning, all free to close examination. Christmas is one of the only shared celebrations the world over, a holiday so steeped in cultural customs that most people blink in surprise when they find out other family’s rituals, like the bizarre people who open gifts on Christmas Eve or the crazy ones who use a pretend elf to spur on good behavior. We know it’s all invented, though, right? We invent traditions and then act like they invented us. These are where my children’s questions come from, the rituals they see acted out as though there is no other way to act. But to a new human, even after just a few years on Earth, all of these things are so clearly made up. Who is this Santa? Why do we give presents? Did Jesus have a Christmas tree too?

While it’s exhausting to be questioned about every decision all day long, I’m glad for the opportunity to consider my life and my habits. Childhood scrutiny is a powerful magnifier, and lately it’s given me clarity on this particular holiday season. I know this – I could leave every tradition behind, leave my house un-decked and the tree in the forest and the presents on the store shelves, and still have a reason to love the holiday season, which is this: At Christmas, we pray.

Every year, as Christmas approaches and we try to make it special with outlandish traditions and shallow rituals that often bring stress and debt, there is something more happening. There is a stirring in the world. There is something that happens on these winter nights, something that speaks mystery and love to us, even when we aren’t sure what that means. We know there is more. We might call it love or hope or peace on earth, but in our heart of hearts we know there is something better to be had, and at Christmas we are allowed to wonder what it is. So we “send love” or “hope for peace” or “wish you a happy new year,” but what we’re really doing?

At Christmas, whether we know it or not,
we pray.

I know it’s weird to talk about praying. Especially if you don’t usually pray. Or you think it’s wasted breath. Or you’re downright opposed to the idea. And we don’t really know what it is, right? We use the word ‘prayer’ like we use the word ‘wish,’ which is like swimming in a puddle and calling it the ocean. The unknown element, the secrecy with which we must approach prayer because it is so intensely personal and within, makes it all the more complex to write about, to speak about.

My daughter said something last night in her bedtime prayers that made me laugh, and then made me think. Sometimes my kids just rattle off their prayers as a quick list of “thank-you’s,” thank you for mama, thank you for daddy, thank you for food, thank you for our beds. Sometimes they pray for people they love. Sometimes they don’t want to pray at all. And sometimes they pray in a way that brings heaven crashing into their bedroom, a stream of glory lighting their tiny bunkbed full of stuffed animals and blankets in a way that renders me silent, sets me still in the face of a God who listens intently to my children, and in the face of their astounding faith in the divine listener.

Then last night my 5 year old prayed, “God, Jesus, Holy Spirit- I just want to SEE you guys. Can you please make me see you? And Mary and Joseph, can you bring them back to life so I can see them too? I know they were here on earth a LONG time ago, but you’re still the Holy Spirit today, and I know you can do it! I love you. Amen.”

Ridiculous though it seems,  I felt such a presence in the exactness of her prayers. She said what she wanted. She said it with confidence because she thinks God loves her enough to listen to anything she has to say. I mean, she doesn’t even feel that way about us like she used to. She’ll preface a question or request with disclaimers like “This won’t take long to help me,” or “I know you might say no.” She doesn’t trust us to listen with an open mind, which is partly because we’ve been listening for 5 years and have developed a non-sense meter that tends towards suspicious, to be honest. But in her prayers? She speaks openly. She speaks with abandon. She speaks like a child, loved and free.

I read this a while ago and it struck a cord in me that keeps playing and playing:

“Prayer is God’s gift to those who pray.”

I could read that sentence one million more times and still wrestle with everything it means. Prayer is God’s gift to those who pray. Prayer is God’s gift to those who pray. The prayer itself, the very movement of the thing, is a gift. The unknown of the process, the slow blossom of a seed in the awaited response: the mystery is in the alchemy of the act.

Certain events in our lives make it impossible not to pray, even when we don’t know to whom or why we speak. Survive a terrible accident: thank you, we breathe. Hold a terribly ill child; please, we weep. Nothing is going right and we falter on the edge of despair; help, we plead. There is tug inside of us towards grandeur, towards a felt presence, towards a tender goodness, towards the sunset and the baby’s healthy heartbeat and the saved marriage and the miracle rent payment and the rescued children; the doubters, the hurt, the angry, the deserted, the lonely, we break under the pressure and open ourselves to prayer like the earth split open on a fault line. Disaster and beauty and desperation and joy bend our knees and soften our hearts until prayers escape our lips, messages to the sky that make us feel at once vulnerable and fortified.

Christmas does this. It reminds us of something. The traditions, silly they may be, can actually be a road inward, a path towards a feeling we can never quite shake:
We are homesick. And Christmas reminds us of that, so at Christmas, we reach for home. We light our candles and our windows. We give good gifts. We gather. We eat. We laugh. And though we don’t know it, through it all, we pray.

I can’t explain prayer. I can talk about it, I can tell you about it and how it changes me every day, I can write about it, but I can’t ever really give it to you. “Prayer is God’s gift to those who pray.” That’s the mystery. And that’s what I’m inviting you into this Christmas- let the mystery settle around you. When you feel yourself looking around, wondering who to thank or who to ask for help or who is speaking to your heart in ways you can’t seem to explain; close your eyes, whisper your prayer, and look towards home.