Almost three hundred years ago, a young man named John Wesley felt his heart “strangely warmed” by a personal experience of God’s grace. John and his brother, Charles, became major players in church history when their “Holy Club” at Oxford, England, eventually sparked what became the Methodist movement (part of the great stream of church history from which my own Nazarene heritage flows). Charles, with his gift of music, wrote countless hymns that still shape worship today, including “And Can It Be That I Should Gain” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”
The mother of John and Charles Wesley, Susanna (actually mother to nineteen children, ten of whom survived to adulthood), was much like the Bible’s Lois and Eunice, who transmitted the faith to Timothy. An amazing mom, she invested deeply in the education and faith development of her children. She homeschooled all of them, including her girls, refusing to have the girls share in any domestic chores until they had learned how to read and write (not just English, but also in Latin). I don’t have to tell you how rare that choice was in the early 1700s. And I have to believe it would have been an amazing sacrifice to not have the domestic help of her daughters while homeschooling and serving as a pastor’s wife.
A woman of singular faith, Susanna is famous for what I call her “apron-over-the-head move.” Whenever in the midst of her busy daily life she felt the need to talk to God, but couldn’t get quiet time away, she would simply pull her apron up over her head (a signal her children quickly learned to honor). Right then and there, in the privacy of her apron covering, she would talk to God, seeking His wisdom and direction. I think all women with deep faith must have their own version of the apron-over-the-head move.
One of the most important gifts Susanna received through her apron prayers is the gift of discernment, that amazing ability to see beneath the surface and beyond the present moment to hear and apply God’s perspective to our current context. When it comes to understanding our calling as women, discernment is priceless.
My friend Mia would laugh at the comparison, but she reminds me a lot of Susanna Wesley. Along with parenting her three gifted teenage boys, she also manages to work two demanding jobs and is deeply involved in serving her church, friends, and community. In other words, she is a woman who leans into her calling with all her soul. As I have grown to know her more deeply, I have become increasingly aware that her discerning “apron prayers” infuse her activity with a quality of joy and aliveness that is rare and precious. What a gift!
Recently, she sent me an apron-prayer text as I faced some new health challenges: “God, give Leslie the strength and stamina for this journey and fill it with the sweetest reminders of your overflowing love for her and her three boys and Les. Jesus, this is your story start to finish. Every provision, doctor, nurse, miracle, tear, discomfort, comfort, grace, and healing! You are the author of our faith and hope! Thank you, Jesus, for carrying Leslie.”
So often what we are called to appears so ordinary and unadorned that, save for apron prayers, we may just miss the brightness and beauty God is inviting us to. The gift of discernment, for instance, invites us to step into a calling that turns the clay pot of an ordinary text message into a masterpiece of prayerful comfort.
~ By Dr. Leslie Parrot. Taken from Soul Friends by Dr. Leslie Parrott. Used by permission of Zondervan. All Rights Reserved.
