A slight break would occur usually in the early afternoon, after the extended rush hours of the morning and before the next tsunami wave crashed through her schedule. It was not a noticeable gap in her day, not even a predictable or reliable pocket of time. It was almost imperceptible, easily missed if she hadn't been listening for it.
If you have ever driven a car with stick-shift, there is a reluctant moment between the release of one gear and the engaging of the next. That was the momentary gift she was looking for.
My mom was a master of those snatches of time. She taught violin lessons to high schoolers in the early morning darkness before the school day, during their study halls, and then again, after school into the evening hours. It was a grueling schedule for her, to say the least, but you know, sometimes you just have to roll with what is needful. Sometimes, life is just hard. She was tired, and half-empty cups of cold coffee decorated our home.
As a result, it was not an unlikely sight to come into our house and see my mom prone and unmoving on the floor, right in the middle of the living room in the middle of the day. Dead asleep, barely breathing, unaware of anything going on around her, even the dogs racing around her stirred up no response at all.
"I'm taking a nap," she once explained to me. "Why don't you just lay down on your bed?" I asked. She looked at me with a bit of shock in her eyes. "Oh, I would get too comfortable. I just need ten minutes on the floor, and I'm good to go."
And seriously, she would become comatose for ten minutes, awaken refreshed without an alarm, and proceed energized into the rest of her day and sometimes deep into the night. It was quite simply "a power nap."
It is not unusual for any one of us for our load to become heavier through the day.
But what if we treated our own languishing souls in the middle of unworkable situations and among impossible people, not with a power nap,
but ten minutes of prayer? Laying not on the floor to sleep, but laying out our troubled hearts and heavy burdens and stormy circumstances before the LORD? Right at my desk, right at the counter, right while I am mopping up someone else's mess.
The truth is that we spend a lot more time stressing out than praying about it.
When I am anxious and overwhelmed, I don't know what to do,
but God Almighty does. As God's Word says in 2 Chronicles 20.12:
"For we are powerless against this great multitude
that is coming against us.
We do not know what to do,
but our eyes are upon You."
I can hurtle through my day, or I can listen to God's way in this, and pray my way through. How can I think differently about this?
A little power prayer in the middle of the day.
Weary? God invented something even better than a power nap.
...it seemed to me a wearisome task,
until I went into the sanctuary of God...
Psalm 73. 16-17
As my friend Brad used to say,
"Stop. drop, and pray."
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