When my heart is overwhelmed?{Considerations from the maternal prayer of Anna in Siam}

Our Father," I could not but ask in the darkness of my trouble, did it need so bitter a baptism as ours to purify so young a soul?

When we pray as mothers, so often our concerns are for our welfare, but far more the spiritual welfare of our children. God sees our distresses.

After this bitter disappointment that the King was not a welcoming monarch for her and her son, Anna says to her son that we must pray. Her heart, however is that his faith be purified and not stamped out, by this dark distress. God gave her a heart to see his youthful enthusiasm and that the fears had not yet settled into his own soul. He was trusting that God had guided her to a safe and exciting situation for them. He had seen griefs and hung onto his faith. But could that remain if more ugly circumstances awaiting them?

Her heart prayer, she penned; as her mouth prayer was simply to allay the fears of her young disciple.

A mother's brooding!

The Whinings that we would allow, if there weren't little ones in hearing distance. Not because I am so strong, Lord am I silent in my struggles, but my faith is small right now, that You know what you are doing and I needn't give the air the benefit of knowing that providence has me questioning Your power and Goodness! God, make me silent when my prayers are for the benefit of venting my unbelief. My faith{and perhaps every mother's faith}isn't strong enough to watch my child lose their faith in God.

so often my mind goes to Grandma Ruth's real question "Where's your faith?" at the loss of my baby. I really didn't get the blow from her, on that. She was asking me, where is the faith that I see those "Baptist Women" show when they go through these things? You are acting like we do! Faith and unbelief are alike in grief, for sure. She was trying to make me prove that I am a Christian to her, to lift her eyes from her unbelief and to make my mother get up from the blow. I couldn't do that. Parts of my faith died with that baby. God knows that and mothers and grandmothers have to carry the corpse of their childrens' dead faiths. She was crying under the power of the grief of mine dying. Mother pall-bearers in the griefs try as they might have a greater burden than carrying the body. If there were no God, it would be a hopeless task. Only He can breathe on a dead part of your faith and awake it to usefulness on His Kingdom plan.

In this prayer, Anna says, Lord please have mercy on me not to see my child's eyes lose hope in You. We can all enter this prayer. Amen.