Praying Mom: Making Prayer Your First and Best Response to Motherhood – Review

A Book on Prayer Written by a Mom for other Moms! – Morolake Ojuola

Make Prayer the First and Best response to Motherhood

Brook McGlothlin

As a young Christian woman, I have come across and read a number of books on prayer but I wanted a book that truly spoke to the new phase of my life. My mom struggles, my current reality of running around with a toddler, changing diapers, pick up, drop off , tantrums and things like that. Brooke did that in this book – Praying Mom: Making Prayer your first and best response to Motherhood. It is a practical, hands-on refresher course on prayer specifically tailored to meet the needs of moms. In Covidian language” We would say “a booster shot” to remind us of the need to use prayer as a parenting tool. It is a book on prayer written by a Mom for Moms!

Brooke shared so many practical examples, her own personal struggles and even asked her friends to contribute to the discussion by sharing their personal real life struggles on how they came to see prayer was a powerful tool for parenting. This added the real mom effect to the book and made it truly relatable – Exactly what I was looking for! The women shared from their heart. No fluff or anything exaggerated. Many times while reading their stories, I felt I was sitting across them listening to their struggles. As I closed the last chapter of this book, there is a renewed resolve to pray for my children like never before. If you also need a refresher course on prayer, something to fire you up as a Mom and help you see the need to pray again, or make prayer your No.1 go-to resource, I highly recommend this book. I will be sharing my thoughts on the book and the parts of the book that blessed me. So let’s get to it!

I wanted to start the year 2022 fired up to pray because towards the end of 2021, I started getting weary. I needed a refreshing material to remind me about the power of prayer with a bit of mom flavour. I also wanted to go back to the habit of reading at least one book a month. I had seen Brooke’s posts on Instagram and they spoke to me in a special way. They were not superficial posts seeking attention but they were deep words on why prayer should be the first not last approach to parenting. So I thought to myself, perhaps there is more to this woman. Let me get her books. (Yes i got 2). I must say, I wasn’t disappointed at all. Many times I laughed, smiled, nodded and took deep pauses as I reflected on her thoughts and analogies as well as the real life experiences shared by her friends. I came to a conclusion that truly, I’m not the only woman with a heart for God desperately praying for grace, wisdom and strength to raise Godly children in a world where foolishness has been amplified so much it seems like wisdom(**Teacher Nneka 2022*). I realized I’m not the only one sometimes confused and worried if I’m doing it right, other times exhausted by it all. I realized that I’m not the only mom with deep questions about why some prayers don’t get answered, why God didn’t arrive quickly at the scene of painful situations where you expect him to show up … I realized there are many “women of like passion” juggling it all. Christian women around the world, deeply rooted holding God’s hand to help them navigate this uncharted terrain of mothering and parenting as a whole. It was refreshing & encouraging to see this.

Brooke addressed 7 Core reasons why mom’s don’t pray and included possible solutions. They are:

1. I don’t know if my prayers truly matter – Lord help me to understand your plan.
2. I don’t know what to pray – Lord teach me to Pray
3. I’m exhausted from trying to trust God – Lord I believe. Help my unbelief
4. I don’t believe God hears my prayers – Lord help me learn to trust you when I can’t see you
5. I can’t pray until I get my life together – Lord put me back together
6. I have small children, I can’t even think much less pray – Lord teach me to pray in the moments of the day
7. I’m so Busy! – Lord help me find time for my most important relationship

3 things stood out to me asides the many other points in the book.

The first is adopting the Pray God’s word back to him strategy. It felt as if light came on me afresh as I read her explanation on this point. I found it to be so refreshing and Whossh! I believe God was speaking to me directly to use this strategy this year. Truly, you can never run out of prayer points when you use the word of God. There are soooo many ! Too many to count. Off course you can trust that I have already adopted this. I recommend it to you too.

Also, her analogy of the will of God, how she applied& connected the story of Naaman to her situation when she got married and had to move left me in awe! I have read that story over and over. Infact it is a personal favourite as i learnt it through a children’s teacher who has now passed on. I found her perspective on it to be so profound! Like her, I also relocated to a completely new environment after I got married and I’m still wading through the waters of finding myself and getting my life back on track so the story spoke to me in a deep way. The will of God will sometimes take us from our comfort zone and put us in places where we have to daily, depend on him. This is my testimony. In this new environment, i have to daily depend on God. You’ll need to get the book to understand this better

The last thing is that Brooke graciously added scriptures for different situations mom’s face along with a number of other resources. Talk of a well thought out process! As a mom herself, while writing, I feel she put herself in the shoes of other moms like her. She knows some mom’s don’t just have that time to deeply search scriptures even though they would really love to. The scriptures she added would definitely go a long way and make the process of praying a lot easier or at least give a road map.

Finally, one of the conclusions from the book that would stay with me for a very long time, is the fact that, after all is said and done, after we have done all that God has asked us to do, the praying and modelling (which we must do), it is God who gives the increase. Just as 1st Corinthians 3:6 says – I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.

Here is how Brooke puts it – I have always placed value on earning. I believed I could earn my way to almost anything I wanted in life and when it came time to parent, I approached it the same way. I thought I would earn righteous children by being the perfect mom. You already know the ending to that story. Even now, my children are far from perfect and as far as I can tell, they will stay imperfect until we’re with God in Heaven.

Thank you Brooke for writing this book. God Bless you!

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