Your Prayers Are Answered, One Way or Another

Sometimes I’m jealous of my nine-year-old daughter’s spiritual life.

Maddie has always been precocious in many areas of her development1, and her faith is no exception. From a very young age, she has been extremely curious about Catholicism, Bible stories, the Saints, and the Mass. She asks probing existential questions for which I wish I had better answers. She is frequently explaining concepts of faith to her younger brothers.

We got a special dispensation from our parish children’s choir director so that she could join a year early. She was fully invested in sacramental prep for First Communion and First Reconciliation. This is her first year as an altar server and she’s already a pro2 who can’t wait for her scheduled Masses.

Her personal faith life is also unexpectedly vibrant for someone so young. Without any prompting from us, she started a prayer journal that she keeps by her bed. She suffers from terrible insomnia, and will sometimes write heart prayers in the journal to help her fall asleep. She also keeps a record of sins that she wants to confess and prayer intentions.

It’s all so heartwarming and encouraging, as well as a much-needed sign that we’re hopefully getting something right in our efforts to get our kids on the path to Heaven.

But this post is about a very specific act of faith that my daughter engaged in last night…turning to God in a moment of personal crisis.

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As a fourth grader, she is now largely responsible for flinging our family into the chaotic world of Too Many Extracurricular Activities. Despite the vow my wife and I took on our wedding day to limit any future children’s clubs and sports to one-per-kid and one-per-season, the activities became too tempting and our calendar is now riddled with volleyball practices, volleyball games, Girl Scout cookie booths, scout meetings, school play practices, band concerts, after-school basketball clinics, and Battle of the Books.

For the uninitiated, Battle of the Books is a competition held at the library in which members of teams from local schools are each responsible for reading a certain number of books from a master list and working together to answer head-to-head trivia questions about these books. Not being much of an athlete, it was one of the highlights of my “team sports” experiences and I have fond memories of my little Catholic school crushing public school titans with our superior knowledge of book titles, authors, and minute plot details.3 Needless to say, I am so excited for Maddie to participate.

Her first match was today, but unfortunately the curse of the overlapping extracurriculars was strong on this particular Monday afternoon, and attending Battle of the Books would mean not attending drama practice for the school play…her first love. This was particularly devastating today because the fourth graders were going to be helping the preschoolers in the play to choreograph their musical number, thrusting her into a leadership position over little children…her other first love.

So Maddie pondered this dilemma in her heart and—much to my great parental Catholic pride—took it to prayer.

Her prayer? That the library would close down on Monday so that she could attend drama practice and not miss Battle of the Books.

Her method? A decade of the Rosary. Once again with the pride. Maddie goes hard.

I’m not sure if she is familiar with St. Josemaria Escriva’s quote that “the Rosary is a powerful weapon,” but this feels like a definite weaponization of the Rosary.

And guess what? The weapon worked! Just not exactly as Maddie intended…

We woke up this morning to a message that drama class had been cancelled for today!

I was sadly on a business trip today and missed her Battle of the Books meet (she indeed loved it), but I couldn’t stop thinking about her answered prayer.

I am stunned but also not surprised by this turn of events. I don’t believe in coincidences. Even in an extremely low stakes situation, God showed up for Maddie to show all of us that He is listening…and perhaps offer the even more important lesson that our prayers aren’t always answered the way we want them to be, but He has our ultimate good in mind.

If her schedule had proceeded as planned on paper today, she would have gone to Battle of the Books and missed drama. Her prayer offered her preferred solution—cancel Battle of the Books and preserve drama—but the actual plan for her life was yet a third way—go to Battle of the Books and cancel drama.

I wanted to relate this funny story both for the posterity of my own memory as well as to illustrate a really simple point that is so difficult for the human mind to comprehend: God knows the plans He has for you—plans to prosper you and not to harm you; plans to give you hope and a future.

Do you believe that?

Or do you just want to have it your way?

What is the drama club of your life?4 What is the thing that you are clinging to as if your life depends on it in your thoughts, your actions, and your prayers?

Maybe your outcome actually is the best way. But maybe there’s a second way or a third way that actually makes a lot more sense for reasons you can’t yet comprehend…and possibly never will, this side of eternity.

The most blatant recent example of God’s mind-boggling (to us creatures) redirection of prayers is the tragic death of evangelist Paul J. Kim’s five-year-old son Micah from the flu.

It was horrific to watch the story unfold on Paul’s Instagram account as an otherwise healthy little kid ended up on life support in the hospital in a matter of hours. He mobilized thousands of people around the world to pray for Micah’s complete healing. Days later, there was nothing medicine could do to save him.

So did God fail the Kim family…and by extension everyone who was praying so fervently for Micah?

A skeptic might say yes. But God, through Micah, was just getting started.

The story of the wave of prayers for Micah made its way to People Magazine, E! News, USA Today, and other major secular outlets. The Catholic faith—and the stoic faithful conviction of the Kim family in the face of unimaginable tragedy—was brought to national attention. Through a grief like no other, they clung to the reality that Micah is in Heaven with Jesus right now—and that it’s a beautiful outcome despite the tragedy.

Furthermore, people began to pray for little Micah’s intercession for their own needs for healing—and miracles started happening. They still are! Paul has shared several stories he received of those who saw Micah in a dream and woke up with physical or mental ailments substantially or completely healed.

It’s obviously impossible to know all the details of these situations, but it’s obvious that people have been changed spiritually by this situation and many have been inspired to pray more—by a situation in which the world would say that prayers failed.

Regardless of how important or mundane our prayers might be, they must be offered on a foundation of trust that is immune to any outcome because we know that God is good and loves us too much for any perceived “bad” answer to be the final move.

We must allow space for God’s creativity in the answers to our prayers.

His master plan will make sense of our current drama.