Years ago I was praying about a job situation, asking constantly and then trying to manage the outcome myself, working every angle I could think of to make it go the way I wanted. None of it was working and I knew it. At the end of a church service there was time to go to the altar, and I went. I told God I was done trying. That I was giving it to him entirely and that I had faith he would work it out in whatever way he saw fit. And unlike every time I had prayed about it before, I meant it. I truly let it go. When I said amen to that prayer I felt a weight lift in a way I have not forgotten. The situation resolved the way God wanted it to, not the way I had been engineering, and it was better. That was the moment I understood what it actually means to hand something to God. Not to pray and keep carrying it. Not to pray and keep reaching to manage it. To pray, and let go, and trust that he heard you.

That is how I have prayed ever since. There is no set time in the morning when I close my eyes and work through a list. It is more constant than that and more ordinary. A whisper under my breath or a thought directed quietly upward whenever something comes to mind. Lord, thank you for your blessings and all you have given me. Please be with so and so. Please be in this situation. My husband went for a run on the trail yesterday morning and before he left I had already quietly asked for his safety. My back was bothering me and I prayed about that too. I pray daily for my family’s health, for my daughter away at university, for my grandparents. When something lands in my mind that feels like it needs to go somewhere, it goes to God. That is simply how it works for me.

I pray specifically. I pray for my husband to reach for me more, and for myself to initiate more easily. I prayed for my grandmother’s health during the months when the uncertainty was heaviest. Small prayers, large prayers, prayers that probably sound strange said out loud to anyone who does not share the same understanding of who is listening. And somewhere in that same breath, with the same quiet certainty, I pray that we will win the lottery. Not a specific figure, until recently. Just enough. Enough to lift the weight of what we carry and give us room to breathe. Enough to pay our tithe on the winnings. Enough to cover the taxes. Enough to pay off our debt entirely, which would change our life in quiet and practical ways that I think about more than I let on. If the debt were gone I could stop watching the clock at a desk and start building something of my own. That is what enough has meant to me. Not a yacht. Not a second home somewhere warm. Just the particular freedom that comes from owing nothing to anyone.

I do not always buy tickets. I am known for saying that if God wanted to bless me that way, someone could simply hand me a winning one. And once, in a manner of speaking, something close to that happened. I was at a fuel station and noticed a scratch off ticket on the ground, wet from the rain. I picked it up to throw it away and saw it was a twenty dollar winner. I am not sure what the theological term is for that sort of thing but it felt like a small and very specific answer to a prayer I had been praying quite casually. Now I pray it more deliberately. I know the Lord can answer that prayer in any number of ways. He could have someone gift me a ticket that turns out to be worth something. He could arrange for another wet ticket to appear at my feet. He could also simply work through the ordinary means of me buying one with a few spare dollars I happen to have, which I now do occasionally, because that may well be exactly how it happens.

But last week the prayer got larger.

The house my grandparents built fifty years ago has come back on the market. They sold it a few years ago when the size of it became too much and their health made the decision for them, though my grandfather was slower to agree. I was there the day of the closing. When the time came for my grandmother to sign, she broke down at the table. I have thought about that moment many times since. I wished then that I could have simply stopped the whole thing and bought it myself, so that whatever happened next, the house would stay in the family. I have the blueprints my grandfather drew by hand for that house. They are framed and hanging on my wall.

I do not tend toward wanting things. I am not built that way. I move through life fairly content with what is in front of me and do not spend a great deal of time longing for what is not. But buying that house would be a dream, and I do not say that lightly, because I do not have dream wants like that. It would be full circle in a way I find difficult to put plainly without it sounding smaller than it is. And if I could bring it back, perhaps they could too, if they ever wanted. I could pave the driveway properly. Make whatever changes would be needed. Have something waiting for them that was always theirs. That kind of winning is not a lower prize. I know that. I am asking for the main one now, and I am asking without embarrassment.

This house prayer I bring back often, in passing through the day and on my knees when I want to be more deliberate about it. Lord, I know you can bless me with this, and I thank you for every blessing I already have. I return to it not because I am carrying it as worry but because it is a conversation I am still in, with someone I trust to answer it. The Bible says you have not because you ask not. I take that quite literally, and I apply it to everything I bring to God, not just the prayers that are easy to explain. I ask. I return to it. And I trust that an answer will come. It may be no. It may be not yet. It may look entirely different from what I had in mind. But it will come, because I asked. And I have found, over and again, that the God I bring it to is faithful with what I give him.

— Kate