It has been more than three years that there has been an urging in me that I needed to pray more consistently and intentionally for my husband. While I pray a lot about my marriage, that is often a quite different matter than praying for my husband. A long time ago I remember a friend challenging me when I was having difficulty in a personal friendship. She said, “Amy, do you care more about the relationship or the person?” That was a strange question. Interestingly, it has stayed with me all these years. Often when I have had tension in interpersonal relationships, the Holy Spirit has helped me to step out of the relationship so that I can pray for the individual without relational strings attached. Of course this is not easy to do!  However, I have been amazed how God can redeem and restore relationships or give me peace even in the brokenness when I pray this way.

Marriage is hard, very hard. In the same three years that I have been dealing with my own marriage struggles, the Lord has put in my path so many women whose marriages are dangling by a thread. I ran into a friend a few weeks ago who I think summarized the marriage curves of so many of us.  She said, “First we were all in the sweet newly married phase, then it was the fun years of having kids, and now it is just ugly!” Sadly, this is true for many of us. While every stage of marriage has its own stresses and struggles, I think that the life stresses that hit after you have been married around 15-18 years begin to reveal many cracks in the marriage relationship. While those cracks may have always been there, they begin to feel like chasms. Whether they are real or imagined chasms does not matter all that much. What matters is the walls that are built in those cracks between husbands and wives that keep them from growing closer as couples and walking in unity. Thankfully by His grace, I am finding that God is able to help Rob and me leap over these walls! (Psalm 18:29)

In my own prayer life, I somehow always default to praying how I can deal with the hurts and the problems in my marriage more than I am able to pray for my husband. So after three years of urging from the Holy Spirit, I am beginning a prayer time at my home to commit 1 hour a week to pray for my husband.  I am inviting others to join me who share the same heart. I am setting aside Fridays at 10:00am to pray for Rob. While I know there are many women who come to mind who have said they needed to do the same thing or they would like to be a part of a prayer group like this, I am aware that it may just be myself in my living room, which is just fine!  Any of you who know me well will know that it is not in my nature to blog or take the time to write on prayer and post it (who is this and what happened to Amy?) Yet, this is exactly how I know this call is from the LORD. I decided to post this at VFM for three reasons:

1) My own personal accountability

2) To invite others in the local to join me (if you would like to come please email kate@visionaryfam.com for more information).

3) To encourage other women through the VFM community to start similar prayer groups.

At the heart of this is simple obedience.  I know the Lord has been putting this on my heart for these past three years and I am now stepping out in faith to follow this call. Praise God for his loving and patient hand with all of His children!

Thanks to all who are reading. I hope to write more posts as the Lord leads. 🙂

God’s Love,

Amy