Everything is Different

Recently, I’ve started praying for Afghanistan.

Praying for countries is new to me. 

When I was seventeen, I stood, backpack slung over my shoulder, ready to leave for school as I watched live coverage of the Columbine school shooting. I watched, then shrugged, largely unaffected, and left. 

When I was twenty, I sat in the bar section of a Chilie’s restaurant and watched two planes crash into the twin towers on 9/11. I knew this was very bad and different from other sorts of “bad” because everyone kept saying it, but I couldn’t quite understand why. To me, it seemed like bad things happened all the time, and this was just the newest tragedy. I walked away largely unaffected.

Maybe I’m not the most sensitive person. Or maybe it is because, growing up, a boy was shot and killed less than half a block from my bedroom window. Maybe it was because when I was eleven, my baby sister died. Maybe it’s because my dad was in a bad car accident when I was thirteen and we thought he was going to die, and while he didn’t, he has been brain-damaged and handicapped ever since. 

Maybe it was because I knew that bad things happened in the world. And so when they did, it just seemed…normal.

But something has happened to me. It started on my kitchen floor ten years ago when I admitted to God that I really didn’t know him at all. Addison Road lyrics rang loud “where have I even stood but the shore along your ocean? Are you fire, are you fury, are you sacred, are you beautiful? What do I know? What do I know of holy?“

Ten years ago something happened. A darling little boy named Kai died. I had been praying for a miracle because for once, instead of having a heart of indifference and shrugging it away as another sad thing, I had entered into his story. I was diligent in praying for Kai, his mother Rachel, his father Wes, and his older brother Ethan. I was convinced God was going to intervene and heal him of his cancer. Night and day and middle-of-the-night I prayed as I read journal entries from Kai’s mom where, both before and after his death, she demonstrated a knowledge and trust and faith in God I simply didn’t have. 

I believed in God. I believed in his Son, Jesus. But I didn’t know him like she did. I realized in that moment, I barely knew Him at all.

On my kitchen floor that day, when I didn’t know who God was or why He’d let this happen, I prayed “Let me know you like Rachel knows you.”

I didn’t want to be a Christian by name. What I wanted, more than anything, was to be a Christian for real. I wanted God to take my heart of stone and make it a heart of flesh, whatever that meant. 

It’s been ten years since that prayer and I can tell you something has happened to me. I can tell you with certainty that I am different. I am changed. I am no longer the young mom on her kitchen floor bawling because I don’t know God. I am the middle-aged mom on her kitchen floor bawling because I do.

You cry either way, I guess. 

When I saw the footage of the swarm of people crowding the plane in the Afghan airport, I did not shrug. When I heard an interview of the couple, two of the 200 left behind in Afghanistan after the last US plane took off yesterday, and about how they likely face death by beheading, and how they were praying God’s angels would be placed at the four corners of their house to protect them, I was not indifferent. 

I am praying for Afghanistan. And I am praying specifically for that couple. 

I don’t pretend to know everything there is to know because I’m not known for my international affair prowess. And so I start prayer by saying things like “God, I know I am ignorant. I don’t know exactly what to pray for and it all seems too big anyway. But I know a country and the people there need you. I know there is a couple praying angels be placed at the four corners of their house for protection. Let it be so.” 

I don’t always feel an outpouring of compassion each time something bad gets reported. I am still (sadly) far from becoming a bleeding heart. I still, at times, have to remind myself to pray even when I don’t feel anything about anything. I tend to pray for specific people I know. Not countries. Not overwhelming conditions. But Afghanistan and Israel have been pulling on my heart for prayer and all I’m trying to say is ten years ago, it never would have. 

I don’t pray because I am good. I pray because I am different. I pray because I am different than who I once was. I pray because God answered my prayer first.  

“And then I caught a glimpse of who you might be. The slightest hint of You brought me down to my knees.” 

Because of a boy and his mom and one desperate prayer on a dirty kitchen floor, everything is different.

Everything is different. 

Don’t think for a moment, He won’t make everything different for you, too.