Fear as a Catalyst for Prayer

Fear as a catalyst for prayer?

How about fear, travel, and driving children?

They frequently go together!

My son was slated to leave at six the following January morning to drive from Seattle to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. In my northern California home, I could not sleep.

I kept thinking about the frigid conditions in eastern Washington and Montana he’d drive through: a projected high of four degrees and possible snow.

He wasn’t used to driving in those conditions, and in good weather, it would take a good twelve hours, maybe longer.

A college graduate, he was determined.

And traveling alone.

“Call me every three hours, or whenever you stop,” I begged.

He laughed off my fears. “No problem.”

I could not sleep, and so I prayed.

More prayers

I prayed for the weather, for wisdom, for protection for him. I asked God to keep him alert, conscious of the other drivers, and careful.

Eventually, I put him into God’s hands and left him there.

For an hour or two until I woke up again and prayed once more.

At seven o’clock, I rose, checked the weather, and considered a different route through Idaho. It would take longer, but my son was more used to driving in rain than snow.

The first call came at eight o’clock. He was twenty miles past the turnoff south to Idaho and wouldn’t backtrack. “I’ll be fine,” he said.

I couldn’t plant any seed of my fear in him—he needed to be confident and alert—so I assured him I was confident he’d do fine.

I lied.

What to do with my fear?

What would you do?

1 John 4:18 says, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment.”

I certainly was in torment, but wasn’t sure how love figured in this instance. Was my fear an indication I didn’t love God enough? Didn’t trust him enough?

I prayed some more, but still couldn’t find peace. So I put him on our church’s prayer line, asked my Facebook friends to pray for him, and appealed to friends on World Magazine‘s (now defunct) blog.

My Christian friends tried to reason with me–some of them had children in far more potentially serious situations than my son. Intellectually, I agreed with them completely. Yet the fear clutched at me.

So I prayed for his safety, more.

He called at lunchtime, feeling perfectly fine. I relaxed a little, but still . . . I prayed.

Snow and black ice in Montana.

He missed the three-hour call-in.

My fear as a catalyst for prayer?

Yes.

I prayed more.

At four hours, I called him. “Where are you?” I put gaiety in my voice.

“A couple of miles outside of Missoula,” he said.

“How are things going?”

“I just totaled my car.”

His tone sounded so matter-of-fact, I nearly missed what he said. When he told the story, I felt terrified and then relieved.

The prayer worked.

“I was driving with a pack of cars, as you do on an Interstate. I had just passed a large truck and gone into the lead. I hit black ice as I moved from the fast lane on the left to the slower lane on the right. My jeep started spinning across the road. Everyone slowed down.”

The car crossed the road, not hitting the truck he had just passed.

Fear as a catalyst for prayer?

I gasped.

The jeep slid off into a barbed wire fence, rolling three times before coming to a rest on its wheels facing backwards. Before he really knew what had happened, the “pack” stopped, and people ran to him.

“What did you do next?” I asked, my gut roiling.

“I unclicked the seat belt and climbed out of the back of the jeep. I’m waiting for the highway patrol now.”

I’m thankful to report that while his car was totaled, he was healthy. EMTs checked him out at the scene and released him to deal with the wreckage.

If I have asked you to pray and you have done so, thank you. If someone else asks you to pray—even about something trivial—please do so.

You never know how God will use your petitions.

Fear as a catalyst for prayer, often, is the best way to begin.

Thanks, St. Mark Prayer chain, Facebook friends, and World Magazine bloggers.

What do you do with your fears?