Play and Pray

We have a Play and Pray group at my church. I talk about it often. Its importance and need in my life.

I have had several ask me about it. What exactly is it? How do you go about starting one?

I thought I'd lay it out here. At least what I know and how we do it.

Play and Pray was started out of my own genuine need. I had a need for prayer. A need to be heard. A need for encouragement, to know that I wasn't the only one struggling in marriage and in mothering. And a need to feel connected to the women in my church.

I sent out an email to some of the ladies in my church. Fellow moms who I thought might relate to my request.

I asked them if they might have some of those needs too.

Many responded saying they did. They were discouraged at times too. They felt they didn't always mother gracefully. Being a wife was sometimes hard. They had fears, depression, husbands deployed, loss they had recently experienced, homeschooling issues...

I was so relieved. It wasn't just me.

So we began meeting. At first we met once a month. The moms met at my house and the kids met at another house close by. We eventually rotated houses. We hired sitters for them and provided them with lunch. Then we carpooled over to my house with our lunches in tow. Over our shared lunches we shared our hurts, our struggles, our fears - our hearts.

It was so good.

In this setting I think it's easier to lay aside our masks. It's just woman to woman. Mom to mom. Sister to sister. We are all eating off the same plate. Not a food plate. No, we have our own, I promise. The life plate is what I'm talking about. That life plate that we all partake in. This journey that we all walk and sometimes we fall down and need help getting back up.

After our lunch and time of sharing we pray.

This has taken different forms. Sometimes we stand up and hold hands. Other times we are standing and rocking babies. Still other times we are holding each other. Sometimes we pray Scripture or for the person to our left or right. Sometimes it's short because we've shared too long. But we always end in prayer.

But although our meeting is over we don't stop praying for each other. There is someone who is in charge of taking notes of our requests and then sending them out to everyone via email. We pray all month long.

We started small and scared. But it's gotten easier and we've gotten bigger!

We are still meeting over lunch time once a month. But we have moved the location to our church. Mostly for space reasons. There may only be between 5 and 10 moms, but that usually means 20-30 kids! I'm not sure how we do that!

I intentionally didn't want this to be a Bible Study format. Although I love Bible Study and get so much out of it. This needed to be different. In a Bible Study setting, we often bring our Bible Study faces. We look nice and sound even nicer. I wanted this to be real. I wanted it to be ok to be honest. To cry. To share our needs and not be afraid of judgement or condemnation. So far it's worked.

I have been amazed at how this little group has provided for the women in my church, including myself. It has allowed us to come alongside each other in ways we would have otherwise never been able to do. It has provided a foundation of caring relationships for those times when life threatens to take us under. It has provided camaraderie for those of us who would rather isolate ourselves. And it's provided encouragement to keep doing the next thing in the many moments of mothering.

There are no set rules. You could make this look like anything you wanted in order to meet the needs of the ladies in your community.

But the foundation should always be honest sharing and honest praying and some form of childcare for the kids.

I hope this has answered some questions. If you have any others, please comment and I will do my best to help answer.


Love,

Mika'l