Sometimes we lose our moorings. We become untethered and bound about, endlessly bouncing from one disaster to the next…wondering if life will every slow down. Just a little. Just enough to catch our breath. We bob and weave like a buoy….broken away and tossed on the waves…no way to be saved. Or to save others.

I’ve been cut loose like that from time to time. And, in the depths of my loss, something happens that reels me back in and makes me feel calmer, more anchored. I know it’s often my own prayers that bring me back to God…to my source of peace and comfort. But, it occurred to me last night as I was meditating on this topic…sometimes it’s the prayers of others that bring us back.

As I scanned the last week, there have been so many opportunities for me to pray. Some for myself, for sure. But many, many opportunities to pray for others. The other night, a sweet friend from my little town in Colorado texted to tell me we had lost a very dear man…a friend to all. A quiet man with a fierce love for life. A talented actor. An adventurer. A sweet spirit. 

I last chatted with him a week or so ago. He had survived his second bout of cancer and the scans were clear, he said. He had to come home from Asia where he’s lived for several years so he could get his cancer treatments. He had to leave his love there, because it’s very difficult to get a visa. They’ve worked at it for the better part of three years, and finally it was granted. She was packed and on her way to join him. He was to pick her up at the airport today. Instead, they had to contact her at the airport to tell her…he had died in his sleep the night before.

Of all the sadness and anger and ugly things that have happened in the last year…that broke me. I know sudden loss. I understand the gut punch a snatch death brings. But, to finally be on her way, then…. I’m heartbroken for her…and I have never met her. So, I pray for her and I hold her in my heart. And I throw her a line.

My friend Kate has been widowed not quite four months. She is still learning to navigate this with teenaged twins. Hers was also a snatch death…a heart attack…just exactly like Mr. Virgo. She’s going through the same things I did….the anger, the fear, the guilt. And, just when she landed a dream job, a horrific ice storm is felling trees and branches all over her acreage. So far, it hasn’t damaged her house too much, but there’s four more days to go through this storm. So, I pray for her and I hold her in my heart. And I throw her a line.

My friend Janine has a niece who just had her first baby…right in the middle of a debilitating brain bleed and resulting surgery and things are scary…sort of touch and go. The family is beside themselves and praying harder than they ever have. So, I pray for her and I hold her in my heart. And I throw her a line.

God gives me an endless supply of lifelines to throw out to people in the form of prayer. When I throw that line out to someone, it sticks to them…whether they know it or not…whether they feel it or not. Then God picks up the other end of the line and takes it from there.

Just as I sat down to write this, a Silver Alert came across my phone. I looked down at the face of the middle aged man and I recognized in him a developmental disability…much like my own brother, and my sweet Uncle Bob who is gone with Jesus now. This man is lost somewhere and it is frightfully cold. He doesn’t have a warm winter coat on…only a hooded sweatshirt. This breaks me even more. There…but for the Grace of God. That could have been my brother. I am overcome with gratitude that he has always been loved and cared for and the people with whom we have entrusted his care are so good to him. 

So…I pray for them all…I hold them in my heart. Then I throw them a line.

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“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”

James 5:16 NIV