Prayers

In primary we teach about prayers being answered. We tell simple stories. I recently told my CTR 7 class about a little boy who lost his pet lamb. He prayed and then found the lamb. In primary stories it always works out quickly. In life it doesn’t.

When Adam first lost his job, we lived near San Francisco. We went to the Oakland Temple, to bolster our courage I guess. I sat in the temple, praying and for the only time in my life, heard an audible answer that we would be blessed. I took that to mean a new job. And soon.

It didn’t happen. We prayed and prayed. Adam’s parents offered that we could stay with them. We prayed that he’d find a job before we had to move. Just to avoid the upheaval. The uncertainty. Braeden prayed Dad wouldn’t find a job. So we could go to Grandma and Grandpa’s. His prayers were answered. We moved to Washington. Time passed. Interviews infrequently came and went. Adam did everything he could think of. Everyone gave us advice. We prayed. I remember praying by my bedside, begging. Please, please. We can’t wait any longer. Soon I realized that yes, we could wait longer because we were. My prayers changed a little. I prayed for faith, patience, understanding. I still prayed for a job. Months passed.

Gradually and eventually something happened. Adam found a job. We found a house to rent. It was time to go back to California and get our belongings. We left the kids and Adam and I flew to San Francisco. Adam and men from our ward there loaded up a U-haul. It was a little on the small side but Adam’s good at spatial awareness and he got everything in. We were loaded to the hilt.

We hit the freeway and the truck started to rock if we got past 50 mph. It was alarming. Was the truck going to flip over? Everything we owned was contained in the truck. And we had over 800 miles to go. We talked back and forth about what to do. What was causing this unsettling rocking? How could we fix it? We realized the truck was unbalanced. In an effort to make it all fit, the oak bookcase, washer and dryer and other heavy things were on one side of the truck. If we wanted to travel with any degree of safety, we needed to stop and re arrange. That seemed impossible. It had been hard to make everything fit in the first place. And there had been about 10 men helping. And I was not very strong. And it was raining. How could we unload all our earthly possessions in the rain and reload them? Continuing like we were wasn’t going to work either though.

We stopped at the next rest area. Adam went into the bathroom and I stayed in the truck. My stomach was in knots. I had had a lot of practice praying in the past months and I prayed then. I prayed for some kind of miracle. For the rain to stop, for us to be able to somehow reload the truck. I looked up and saw Adam walking towards the truck and the rain had stopped. Adam climbed into the truck next to me and I told him that I’d just prayed for the rain to stop and it had. He said that he’d prayed for the rain to stop too. We looked at each other and climbed out of the truck to start unloading. Not only did the rain stop, but the wind started to blow. Pretty hard. The wet pavement started to dry. We opened up the truck and unloaded things: heavy things, light things. Soon the now dry pavement was littered with our futon, bookcase, boxes, a lamp. Adam quickly figured out how to get everything back in and I was able to help him. We got back in the truck and started out. The truck wasn’t rocking. We were safe to proceed. And it started to rain again.

Our prayers that day were answered as quickly as if we’d placed the order at a drive up window. We prayed for help, we got it. Like a primary story.

When I think about these two different sets of answered prayers, I wonder which I learned more about prayer from. What if Adam had been able to find a job the day he lost his other one, the day we started praying for him to find a job? We would have missed out on a lot of lessons learned. You’d have had a hard time convincing me at the time but we would have missed out on a lot of blessings too. So many blessings. We moved to Washington which was where we’d always wanted to end up anyway. Our children got a chance to get to know their grandparents. We had a lot of time with Adam. In the years since that Adam’s been working (and I’m grateful he’s been working!) we see much less of him. I feel sorry for Mark because Adam has never had as much time with him as he did with Braeden and Emma, in those days when he was looking for a job. We were blessed with enough of everything we needed. We had a comfortable place to live and food and clothing for our children. My prayers were answered all along the way. We were provided for and learned that we don’t always know when or how our prayers will be answered, but someone does. And they will be answered.