I often pray that God would make me attentive. On high alert for the people he needs me to see.
One morning, I prayed a prayer in my journal:
“Dear God, will you show me someone who needs me today?”
I’m a frequent pray-er of this prayer.
I sat there for a moment, looking at the prayer, and then felt a nudge in my spirit to change it—to shift one word that would completely change the entire prayer.
“Dear God, will you show me someone who needs You today?”
I think it’s my ego that wants to be needed by other people.
It’s a constant reorientation to put my ego behind God and realize that people need God a lot more than they need me.
That same day, I met a woman who told me her daughter was 16 years old and struggling with depression. She’d lost all motivation and only wanted to sit in her room, doing nothing. She wouldn’t move her body. And I totally got it- when you are depressed, you don’t really feel like doing anything at all.
She felt helpless, as a mother, to pull her daughter from this pit. I assured her she was doing okay. She cared. She was available. She knew all too well that she could not do the work for her daughter. She could hold out a flashlight. She could call out directions into the dark. But she could not claw her way through the pit for her daughter. I know this because I’ve been the daughter. I’ve come through the pit.
We talked about medication, therapy, and rhythms. I shared with her my recent health journey and how it had changed my life, especially the depression side of things. She grabbed a Post-it note and wrote down the name of the doctor’s office I go to.
“Maybe that’s why you’re here,” she told me before we took our seats. “Maybe you came to Atlanta for a conversation just like this one.”
She didn’t know the prayer I prayed that morning. She didn’t know she was the answer. I kept that secret to myself. But I could hardly pay attention as I spoke that morning because I was so in shock, so marveled by God answering that little prayer of mine:
Dear God, will you show me someone who needs You today?
It felt so much fuller than my own need to be needed—to know someone felt touched by God’s presence because I showed up in that space.
I want more of that.
I’m not shifting the words back to me.
I’m going to keep praying that prayer just as it is and sealing it with an Amen. So be it.
Hannah Brencher (abridged)