Every time the group asked for prayer requests, I felt like a broken record as I repeated the same request. Finally, I stopped asking, instead plotting the way I would spring the answer on the group and bask in their words of affirmation for my amazing faith.

I am still plotting.

Five years have come and gone since I first prayed for my beyond human comprehension situation. I read Philippians 4:6. What’s that acronym? CATS? No, it’s ACTS—adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. A website asks if I tried using “the ACTS prayer model to take your prayer life to a new level?” Obviously not. I don’t have anything against acronyms, but my prayers in this area have been more along the lines of Psalms 6, where the David interrupts his prayer: “My soul also is greatly troubled. But you, O Lord—how long?”

“Do we keep praying?” I ask my husband.

“Yes,” he replies and does, and does when I confess, “You pray. I can’t today.”

In her devotional book, A Quiet Heart, Elisabeth Elliot writes a lot about prayer. In one devotional, she advises not to be discouraged when there is no immediate answer. She references Philippians 4:6-7. I read these two verses I know so well, and there all along in verse seven is the answer to my prayers and supplications: “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Italics added, ALL CAPS implied.)

Peace—when five years come and go, and you continue to make the same request known to God. Peace—because Jesus, our perfect high priest, not only wants us to “draw near to the throne of grace,” but also to find his “mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). And when we accept Jesus’ invitation to come, we find rest from a legalism that reduces prayer to my answers in my way and in my time frame.

I don’t come from a faith tradition where kneeling was a part of prayer, but perhaps I should kneel the next time I make this request known to God, if only to remind myself of the posture of a heart that is at peace and rest in Jesus.

The other day a friend told me, “I can tell you’re at peace now.” Thanks, dear friend, because you live in war-ravaged Ukraine and know peace when you see it. Thanks, dear friend, for affirming God’s amazing peace and work in me. And thanks, dear friend, for being constant in prayer, even when I am not.