When you want to pray for greener grass

I have a lot of friends who are traveling right now.  I am hiding behind the closed bathroom door returning some texts when I realize this. “Will you pray?” my screen full of messages asks me. Friends headed off on mission trips, work events and even vacations have reached out to update me. “Will you pray for all the things?” one text requests. And sitting cross-legged on my bathroom floor, I assure them all that yes, yes I will pray.

The bathroom floor, really? Well, it has been a crazy few weeks here. We had a southern “snowstorm” only one day after the kids returned to school from winter break. For days we were trapped at home with piles of laundry, and people. So, yeah, the bathroom floor is my go-to spot.

Leaning against the wall, I struggle to hear my own thoughts and communicate for just a minute with people who do not ask me to feed them or find them some dry gloves. “Will you pray for all the things?”  The words blink their way right into the heart of my hiding place.

I start to answer her back as I picture her there in her place. She is on a work trip,  at this important meeting with all of these intelligent adults who are doing good work. And suddenly, I can’t type. I can’t pray. I just sit. Dinner needs to be made and from the sound of the stomping and the door slamming there’s more mud that needs to be cleaned. And it is cold, this feeling that climbs slowly into the middle of my heart.

I am jealous. I want to go. I want to be somewhere important and different and other. I want that grass on the other side of the fence. It looks so green.

I try to fight it. I know how this works; I’ve read all the books and memorized all the verses. I close my eyes and begin to list my blessings. Amazing and healthy kids, an awesome husband who has a great job, beautiful house, food, water, friends. I say them out loud to the empty bathroom. I don’t want to let it win. I am so very grateful.

But it won’t lift. All these sweet friends flying all over the country and here I sit on the bathroom floor weeping over unmade dinner and messy floors. What must God think of me? I hear the raised voices of a brotherly argument and these words flash right onto the screen, “You are the best! I love knowing I can always count on your prayers. Sometimes I just wish I could be the one at home praying. Traveling stinks! Love you.” She signs off and  I can’t stop the tears that fall down into my lap.

“Will you pray for all the things?” All the things that bind us and hold us and make us look around at our places for ones that seem better. All the things that we want to have, to change or to lose. All the things. The things that she wants; the things that I want. No one is immune. At some point,  it gets us all.

We stand in our places, and we want else; someone else, something else, somewhere else. It can make us blind.

The sun is setting low, casting shadows through the icy trees outside the bathroom window,and my boys are hollering now, searching for a mother who will fix all the things. I do not know where she is; so I stay hidden.

“Lord you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance” (Psalm 16:5-6).

This verse comes at me out of nowhere. King David’s words. King David who is referred to in the Bible as “a man after God’s own heart”. King David who wanted other and else and who took those things. King David who grieved the heart of God with his longings for what was not his. He was unsatisfied with the portion and the cup that the Lord assigned him.

Yeah, that hits a little too close to home. Mission trips and board room tables glitter in the light of the late day sun; right out there in front of me. ‘Mine?’ I ask the Lord. ‘Please?’

But the little one bangs hard on the door. “Will you play Monopoly with me? Nobody likes me and I hit my head on the garage floor!” He’s shaking with sobs and covered in mud from the icy slush outside. I look right at him and I love him. But, my awful brain thinks, “Anything but Monopoly. It is the longest and the most complicated game ever invented. I wish that God would call me to go spread the gospel to some third world country or lead a charitable organization to help starving kids around the world. I wish that….”

“Go wipe his tears and play the game, ” the Lord whispers to my dark heart. “These are your boundaries. This is where I have placed you. This is where I use you. This is your portion. For now.”

Maybe you get this? Maybe you’re drowning in diapers and dirt and want out or maybe you’re jet setting around the world and want home.  I don’t know. I struggle hard with this wanting thing.

But as I come out of my hiding spot and take up my place with the dirt and the games and the dinner, I find myself leaning into Jesus. Help me do this Lord, I pray. Help me see these boundary lines as pleasant places.

You see, I am learning that feeling guilty for the way I feel is a circle that can never be broken. It leads to fake prayers that hide me from God. He sees my heart, all of it. So I might as well own up to the darkness that hides there.

I want the grass that looks so much greener on the other side of that fence. I want to make a difference for him in ways that seem much more exciting and real than cleaning up mud and playing Monopoly. But while I am here chasing after a new place, a different place, a more exciting place. Do you know what God is chasing? Me. He is chasing me and he is chasing you. He wants us.

“My dwelling place will be with them. I will be their God and they will be my people” (Ezekiel 37:27).

He wants us to see him in our places. And then, only then will we realize that our boundary lines have been drawn in pleasant places. Whether we are on bathroom floors, in boardrooms, in airports or on foreign soil, He is and always will be Immanuel, God with us.

So, yes, yes I can pray for all the things.