The following article appears in the book A Dad’s Prayers for His Daughter by Rob & Joanna Teigen. The Teigens provide 88 wonderful prayers for fathers to pray for their daughters, along with insights from dads. This was my submission:
Until one particular Tuesday in November, my daughter Grace had been having a good experience in her first year at school. She was in kindergarten and loving the adventure of meeting new people and learning new things. But that Tuesday morning, as Grace was in my office getting ready to go to school for an afternoon field trip, she began to complain that she didn’t feel well and didn’t want to go to school – even though she had no signs of sickness. When I told her that if she stayed home she would have to stay in bed all afternoon, she didn’t blink. “That is fine,” she said. It wasn’t like Grace to want to stay in bed even if she was sick, so I asked if something had happened at school. “Yesterday on the playground at recess, no one wanted to play with me. I asked two different girls and they said no.” I could feel the sadness in her voice.
My first instinct was to find those girls who wouldn’t play and give them a piece of my mind. Of course, I knew that was wrong. My second instinct seemed better. “What if Mom went with you? Would you feel better about going?” Grace brightened up and said, “Oh yes!” But immediately, I felt a prompting in my spirit that actually my second instinct was not sufficiently better than the first, especially when my wife, Lisa, reminded me that she was taking care of our two youngest children that afternoon and couldn’t go. It was then that I felt God telling me what I should have said in the first place. “What if I pray extra hard for God to be with you? Would you go them?” Grace agreed that if I would pray, she would go. We prayed together, and then she left.
That afternoon, I cancelled my meetings so I would have time to devote to praying just for Grace and her field trip. Earnestly and ferventantly, I prayed as if Grace’s spiritual life hung in the balance. “God,” I said, “I know there are times that we have to learn that not everything in life goes great just because we pray. But please not today. Today let Grace learn that you answer prayer. Please be with her in such an obvious way that it will build her faith and cause her to trust you. I know that if Lisa had gone with her, or if I had gone with her, her trust would be in us. Now, Lord, you can cause her trust to be in you. You have promised that you will never leave Grace or forsake her. Now fulfill that promise in a powerful way so that she might know that you are real.” I prayed those words over and over again during the time Grace was on the field trip.
When 3:25pm rolled around, I made sure I was at the kindergarten door to pick her up.
“How was the field trip?” I asked with bated breath.
“It was great, Daddy! God really answered our prayers!” Grace replied.
Thank you, Lord.