Prayers Please

Most of you know through this blog that my father has Alzheimer's.  Sometimes, it can cause people to misjudge distance and thus fall.  Yesterday, my dad fell.  He broke his left hip.

Today, he will have surgery to replace the ball in the hip. 

So I am asking all of you to pray for the surgeon, for the team that helps the surgeon, for my dad, for my mom, and for all of us who get the frustrating task of having to keep going, because we don't live close enough to go and be simply present. 

While I am at it, I will also ask you to pray for a complete stranger.  Yesterday at mass, I took my youngest to the cry room.  We were at our "It's-5-o'clock on Sunday Mass" Church precisely because they have a cry room.  The space for children at this church is a large open kitchen, walled in with a large glass window, used for meetings where whoever is meeting, will also be serving coffee and probably food.   There is a bin of toys, and there are chairs stacked available for the adults who bring their children there.  

When I arrived, there were two mothers and seven children in the room.One mother had an 8 month old and a 3 year old boy. The other mother had two sets of twins, ages 5 and almost 7.  The sets of twins were very busy playing and the mother's face looked stretched like leather, too thin, worn from pain and stress.

I cannot help myself.  During the offertory song, I said "Hello." 
She spilled open. 
"I don't know why I come to this mass. I've been coming here since they were babies and I can't get them to listen or get anything out of it and I'm getting less and less."  If ever there was a soul that seemed to be begging, "Please don't let me quit coming to mass but help me get something from it," it was she.

I sympathized, told her I understood that there were masses like that for every parent, and she mentioned that she normally goes to the 11:30 where there's a children's mass but they don't like to get in the car.  I admittedly made a joke about how if they want to control the schedule, they should learn to drive.  She smiled.  I then suggested bringing along a friend, that she needed some help.  I couldn't stay because at that point, my two year old found the door knob, opened it and was skipping back to where the rest of my family was.  

But her lament stayed with me all mass.  The Communion song felt like a love song from a Smitten God to her soul to me, "Come Back to Me...with all your heart...stay with me..." I could hear God courting her.  The closing song was an encouragement, "My grace is sufficient, My Grace is enough. My Grace is enough."

After mass, I returned to the cry room. She was still there packing up.  I told her I'd hoped I'd find her again and suggested the Magnifcat as a way of feeding herself daily, and Fr. Barron's Word on Fire for Sunday preparation.  It was all I could do, my family was already bustling out the door to get back home for dinner.   So I would also ask also, that all of you pray for this woman, that she heard how much God wants her and her children at the mass no matter how they act, His Grace is enough.