What Helped Me

Once a month we have our Just Keep Going Parents Prayer hour. Strewn on the 6′ x 8′ table are white paper tents with the parent’s first name written in Sharpie, a slash mark and their child, niece, grandson or granddaughter or friend’s child who is using alcohol and/or other drugs, has mental health issues, or is in early recovery. There are over twenty-five pieces of paper with probably fifty names. Then we verbally add more from the lists in our head – kids we know who are using and others who are discovering recovery. We pray a lot of things for a lot of young people in that sixty minutes, but the best part is…

when we remind each other who God is.  That’s the best part. I insist on bold, audacious prayers for these kids, but the other parents are usually the ones who thank God for Himself. This humbles me cuz I am into the request thing, but they consider The Source.

Somehow there’s great peace in knowing the One you are addressing is listening and He gets it — He gets you, and that this is hard and you’re sick of it. That maybe you’re here in body but flatlined in spirit, that after a zillion years of faith, today you’re not sure this really is worth the time but you showed up.  As Peter said when Jesus asked who else was leaving with the exiting followers, Where else would we go? You have the words of truth.

We tell how grateful we are for the fact that God is everywhere: in the treatment facility, the half-way house, the great or not-so-great sober-living place, the prison, the crack house and the streets. He is in the dorm, the apartment, and the basement. He knows everything; where they are when their moms haven’t heard from them in weeks, to who might be the best roommate for them in treatment. He knows if they’ll stay sober one month or 65 years. We ask for 65 years, because we can and it happens. Even if it didn’t happen, God is into first times, one time, and this time.

Rest assured, that hour a month we gather to pray for these young adults is not the only hour they get prayed for. Those mom-minds never lose the  “Please, God,” whether they are teaching a class, watching a movie or talking to you.  I know that from first- hand experience.

Excerpt from Just Keep Going; Spiritual Encouragement from the Mom of a Troubled Teen

On difficult days I would go off on my walk with my music … relief would come when I rounded a particular corner and reached the top of a certain hill in the neighborhood. As I would look up in the vastness of the sky, I would see all that God was capable of creating. If he could make galaxies, surely He could do something significant in the life of one teenage boy in Wisconsin. 

If you’re local in southeastern Wisconsin, join us. Email me for details. Or start your own.