The Secret to Life

Lots of things are going on in my life. I’m a wife, a mother to three, part-time employee at a church I love, active in two ministries serving our military families, and a full-time writer. People frequently ask me: How do you do it?

It’s simple.

I pray. A lot.

I pray for the health, safety and spiritual growth of my husband and children. Because the whole health of all of us determines, in part, how much I can be involved in outside my home. So I pray against sicknesses, pray for healings, and pray that God would draw each member of my home ever closer. I pray against apathy and for boldness. I pray against selfishness and for each to recognize their physical talents and spiritual giftings. I pray they are never satisfied with where they are today, but instead actively work toward becoming closer to the men and women God created each of us to be.

I pray for what activities I should get involved in and what events I should attend. Being on the church staff and a co-leader of its military ministry means I know a lot of people. And a lot of people are giving birth, getting married, having birthdays, and offering parties in their homes for me to buy great products. Add to that my children’s friends and my husband’s co-workers and our schedule is usually fairly well packed. Sometimes it’s a tough truth, but I cannot do it all.

I pray for my books and my readers. I want to write what God wants written because His books change hearts and renew minds. He brings hope and that’s what I want to convey more than anything else. But I also pray for you because I want you to read the message within my book that God meant for you. Nothing brightens my day more than when someone comes to me and tells me what they got out of one of my stories, especially when I know that I did not intentionally put that meaning into it. I’m not that good of a writer. But God is.

But I also strive to pray for every other detail of my day. Because the moment I think I don’t need to pray, the minutes I think I know what I’m doing, my enemy has an easy chance to trip me up.

Even though I know basic accounting, I still need to pray over my job at the church helping to pay the bills and oversee ministry budgets. With all those numbers, it’s easy to miss or misread one. It’s also far too easy to focus on the numbers and forget the people behind them.

Even though I’ve been in or part of the military lifestyle for my entire life, I still need to pray over each email communication and face-to-face encounter. Because I’m human and very fallible and do not know it all.

Even though people like my books, I still need to grow and improve as a writer. And more books and teachers exist to help me than I could ever learn from, so I must be wise in my choices.

Even though I’ve been a mother for almost 16 years and have studied my children to know them, their strengths, and their weaknesses, tomorrow is still uncertain. And they all have major decisions before them that I need to train them and remind them to pray over. I must lead by example as well as by word.

Even though I’ve been a wife for more than 16 years, living with another human can still be difficult. He’s a blessing to me and I want to be a blessing to him. I want to see the potential God sees in him more than the failures and disappointments that are a natural part of living with someone.

And so I pray. A lot.