"Can I leave too?"

some short thoughts on prayer

“L is leaving today to live with her mommy. We’ll be sad and miss her, but it’s good to be with your mommy.” This is the refrain I repeated to my two-year-old throughout the morning on her foster sister’s last day with us. Sweet L was getting picked up by the caseworker after lunch, and would be leaving our home after nine months together.

“Can I leave too?” my daughter responded after a while. “Like L?” I suppose I may have made it sound a little too exciting.

Jessica Lynn, a fellow foster mom I’ve connected with here on Substack, posted about a similar exchange last month. She wrote about her toddler bio daughter discovering to her dismay “that I am, in fact, her only mom, and she doesn’t get to go visit another one like all her siblings do.”

We can’t help but laugh and wince at these toddler proclamations. They don’t understand, with their limited perspectives, that being stuck at home with just one, loving mom is not evidence of lack, but of mercy.

Jessica posed a question that’s been tumbling through my brain the past month: How often does my Heavenly Father lovingly smile down at me, knowing that in my limited, human wisdom I do not understand that what He has given me is actually what’s best for me?

What no might I be hearing from God that feels like pain, but is ultimately protection? Could it be possible that his not letting me have all that I want, right when I want it, is actually a mark of his kindness to me? Dare I believe that—despite living in a world that tells me immediate gratification is my birthright, something to be grasped by any means necessary?

In our kids ministry at church, we teach simple definitions of various attributes of God.¹ God is wise: he knows what is best. God is loving: he does what is best. God is good: he is what is best. There are more attributes we cover: merciful, faithful, just, generous, holy, on and on—but those first three, to me, are anchors.

He knows more than I know. He sees more than I see. And oh, how he loves me. He may not give me everything I think I want, but he has freely, fully, forever given me the thing I need deepest of all—the forgiveness, the life that is found in him alone. The life that he secured for me when, for the joy set before him, he endured his own unanswered prayer and walked the path to Golgotha—a million miles away from any sense of entitlement to ease or instant gratification.

None of this is to say that it’s wrong to ask God for things—on the contrary, he is a generous Father who invites us to come to him in prayer. And it’s not to say that the desires you’re bringing to him are so silly or clearly misdirected as a toddler inadvertently asking to be put in foster care because mom’s hyped it up to sound kinda fun.

It is good and right to come to him with our honest hopes and hurts and longings. Keep coming. Keep asking. Keep trusting. And keep daring to believe that a no given by a wise, loving, and good God—a God who’s given all for you—might ultimately be worth receiving with thanks.

A final note: after reading the thoughts of writers wiser than me, I’m falling on the side of disabling Substack’s Pangram AI-detector feature. It’s like John Mulaney’s “PROVE. PROVE. PROVE.” bit—I don’t want you to use the robot to prove that I’m not a robot. A robot does not know a thing about what I write about—love and grief and the embarrassment of poking someone’s toes in the public bathroom. Instead, here’s my proof: I scribble my words in a journal in random pockets of the day when I’m not working, nursing the baby, or being asked by my toddler to sing a “faster” version of Beauty and the Beast. In other words, I trust you and hope you trust me.

1. These definitions were originally developed by The Village Church.