Hold me up & show me the path forward
Prayers for when your child is sick or suffering
Welcome to the Mothering Spirit newsletter! Each Saturday morning, you’ll receive a round-up of the week’s posts—perfect for your weekend reading.
This week on Mothering Spirit
Shauna’h Fuegen shares the emotional roller coaster of her son’s unexpected surgery—and how their time together in the hospital brought unexpected gifts:
“What I most remember was the pressing realization that I needed to be strong for my child. I needed to break the news to him that he wasn’t going home that night. He was going to the hospital, he was going to need surgery, and I didn’t know when life would be back to normal. I didn’t feel strong enough to do this myself, so my heart cried out to the Holy Spirit…I was humbled to be so utterly out of control, to be so dependent on my faith to hold me up and show me the path forward. There was no choice but to surrender to God’s will.”
Read the whole story: God’s Fingerprints On The Hardest Days.
Your turn: Have you ever felt God’s presence with you in unexpected moments?
Kayla Craig offers a prayer for parents whose children are facing surgery or hospitalization from To Light Their Way: A Collection of Prayers & Liturgies for Parents:
O Lord, I ache to fix things,
To heal my child,
To protect them from suffering.
And though I wish I were in control,
I'm fighting to trust that You alone are God.As they prepare to don a gown
And be whisked away from my hands,
Go where I cannot, O God.
Fill the doctors and nurses
With compassion, confidence, and care
As they help my child toward healing.
Read the rest here: A Prayer Before a Child’s Hospitalization.
Save this for when you need it—or share with a friend whose kids have been sick: the simplest prayers for when your child is sick. Breath prayers, a Psalm prayer, and more:
Inhale: Heal my child, Lord.
Exhale: Heal me, too.Inhale: You love my child.
Exhale: Help me trust in your love.
From Prayers for When Your Child is Sick.
Bonus prayer
We had an email glitch this week, so Shauna’h’s essay didn’t go out to our hearty crew of loyal email subscribers who get our posts 3x/week.
(Want to join them? Hit reply with your email address, and we’ll add you to the list to get all our posts straight to your inbox.)
To make sure everything was running smoothly, Laura wrote an extra prayer for when your child is suffering. Bookmark for when you need or share with a friend who’s struggling now:
God of goodness,
How could you let this happen to my beloved child?Watching them in pain
Brings the deepest pain I have ever known.
I wish I could step in and take their place
So I could suffer instead of them.But I know that you know
Human suffering from the inside out.
That when you came to walk among us,
You came to embrace and transform
Everything about our existence:
Even suffering. Even death.So I trust that you are with me now,
In the anguish of watching my child go through the worst…
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A final word for reflection
Watch this beautiful Reel from Rachel Brady on her son’s suffering and healing—and how God care for us like a parent, too: “He’ll weep when we are weeping, and he’ll laugh with us, too.”