Unwanted Gifts & Unanswered Prayers
Rule was, any book in my father’s study was fair game. Any of us six kids could go in at any time and choose any book off of any shelf and read it. I don’t remember when I joined the ranks of older siblings as a patron of my father’s library, I don’t remember the time when my ritual of slowly walking around his room began, carefully reading authors and titles, slowly selecting the books, feeling them in my hand, reading the blurbs, perusing the stories inside them, bringing them home to my room in stacks and devouring them. Granted, I wasn’t a wide reader. My tastes were confined to specific authors or genres. Reading level was never discussed (thankfully, the methods they drill in me at grad school to help me ascertain appropriately grade-leveled reading material for my students were unknown to my parents). If I wanted to read it, I was allowed. I brought home some C. S. Lewis and started building my own Lewis library in my early teens. I read every A. W. Tozer book I could find on my father’s shelves (and finding books in his library is an interesting feat — his methods of organization still cause me to scratch my head). I read Zacharias and Brand and Bonhoeffer and Bounds and Chesterton. And more often than I should like to think, my father’s books found their way to the bookshelves of my own bedroom and took up permanent residence there, adopting me as their new mother.
There came this day very shortly before my 12th birthday (or maybe it was my 11th?) when my dad said I could go in his study. I’m assuming I was looking for a book because that’s really all there was to find in the room (unless one likes to collect keys that unlock nothing in particular or stare at an assortment of temperature-gauging instruments or listen to music on high-quality speakers. My father is a man of few but passionate interests). So there I was in his room on a Saturday night. I flipped on the light that dark November evening. To my disbelief, to my ever-lasting delight, there was a surprise to behold in his always-predictable study. In addition to the wall-to-wall bookshelves, desk, couch, recliner, coffee table, filing cabinets (we shall not mention the state of the files in those cabinets), there, in the middle of the floor, obviously not intended to stay there long-term, was a brightly colored hamster cage, complete with said rodent inhabiting its premises.
A hamster. On the floor. In my dad’s study. Right before my birthday. And all I’d asked for was a hamster for my birthday.
This could only mean one thing.
A ran out into the sanctuary, up to the right side of the pulpit where my father stood in front of the altars on that Saturday night prayer meeting. I stood on my tiptoes to reach his ear, “What is that hamster doing in your study?” My ever-honest, always-genuine, nothing-to-hide father. He could have said, “Oh, you know. Tom is on vacation and needed us to watch it for him.” But no, not my father. Deceit wasn’t a word in his vocabulary.
Head back, hand over his closed eyes he exclaimed, “Oh! I blew it!”
This could only mean one thing.
The intruding hamster taking up residence in my father’s library was supposed to have been my surprise gift for my 12th birthday. The untamed, feral hamster. The hamster with the long teeth. The hamster Tom wanted to get rid of. The hamster that couldn’t be held because it would bite you. That was my birthday gift.
I was elated. I’m not intimidated by difficult projects. A houseful of kids would be a sure antidote to the hamster’s guarded tendencies.
I brought Charles II* home and tried to domesticate him. Being domesticated wasn’t something Charles II wanted to be.
I’m guessing there’s a book somewhere on my father’s disorganized shelves with these words, “All get what they want; they do not always like it” (Lewis, p. 205). (1)
My father gave me what I wanted for my birthday. But regardless of our repeated attempts at making Charles II a member of the Barnard family, Charles II didn’t want to lay down his habit of using his long teeth to test the strength of anything that came within reach of his incisors.
And oh, the gifts that I have begged and implored and prayed and petitioned and pled for from a Father Who is all-seeing and all-knowing. How many times have I banged on the door and rattled the handle and made my requests known? And on the other side of that imposing door, silence.
Silence.
How many times must I beg and implore and plead and petition before Someone on the other side of that door arises, and opens the door, and grants the requests that a heart has been screaming for for so long? How many prayers have to be prayed before the Father knows that we are serious about our requests? How much fasting must be done before the Righteous Judge says “enough is enough”?
And it came to me just this week that maybe my praying and fasting is not so much about the answers to prayer as much as it is about my praying changing me.
Maybe He wants these unanswered prayers to change me.
I remember praying this prayer almost a decade ago, taken from the hymn “Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart.”
Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear…
Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer… (2)
I underlined those words in the song and placed them at the front of my Bible. God saw that sincere prayer of a 17-year-old girl and has been answering it ever since I first made the prayer my own. I’m sure there have been times in my spiritual journey when my prayers resembled my 12th birthday request as I received the undomesticated rodent. Had my heavenly Father answered my petitions how I wanted, how I contrived and imagined to be the best method to receive the answer, I would not have liked the gift. Just like I eventually didn’t like my 12th birthday gift and tried pawning Charles II off on anyone who might want a biting hamster, finally having to ask Tom to take the unwanted gift back.
So I submit myself to this painful praying, this slow process of waiting and hoping in silence, of laying my heart open and letting my Father take His time in providing what He sees as best.
“For most of us the prayer in Gethsemane is the only model. Removing mountains can wait.” (3)
So with Christ I pray, “Nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42).
*I christened the hamster “Charles II” after the hamster my father owned as a child, Charles. Naturally, my hamster was Charles II since he was second in line from my father’s hamster.
1. Lewis, C. S. (1955). The Magician’s Nephew. New York: Harper Collins.
2. Croly, G. (1854). “Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart”
3. Lewis, C. S. (1964). Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer.
Images of books in my bedroom by Merilee Barnard.
Image of hamster retrieved from: http://animalz-world.blogspot.com/2013/01/hamster.html