It's T.I.M.E.

• Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies
• She openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness

A number of years ago (more years ago than I care to remember!) I was a brand new President of the Women's Ministry at the church we attended. It was during one of the few times in my adult life (until recently) that I wasn't working full-time in addition to caring for home and family, and there were several of us ladies who were blessed enough to be stay-at-home wives and mothers. We decided to hold a prayer meeting one morning a week, and after much discussion decided Tuesday would be the perfect day.

It seemed like providential confirmation when we discovered that the national Women's Ministry Department of our fellowship had established Tuesday as a weekly day of prayer, and had some prayer guides printed in the form of bookmarks with the title "T.I.M.E"--

• Tuesday
• Intercession
• Meditation
• Expectation

With this confirmation, we were ready to begin!

Several of us gathered that first Tuesday morning, a little unsure about how we wanted to proceed. Rather than do a "circle of prayer" type meeting, with one or more taking turns leading in prayer while everyone else prayed silently, we decided to make more of a "prayer closet" atmosphere, with dimmed lights, and freedom to pray as each felt lead to do or were comfortable doing.

So we shared a few prayer requests, and then each of us went to our separate corners, so to speak. Some of us knelt at the alter, some at a pew; some sat, some paced; some prayed quietly, some loudly, some silently. We agreed from the start that we would each pray as long as we felt led to pray, and then we would be free to stay and wait for the others or to slip out and be about the business of our day.

To be honest, when we started I was lucky to be able to last for twenty minutes. In twenty minutes I had "prayed around the world", a phrase I picked up from the first book I remember reading devoted to the subject of prayer, Evelyn Christenson's What Happens When Women Pray. Too ashamed that as a leader and the "instigator" of this plan, all I could manage was twenty minutes of solid prayer, I lingered for another 10 minutes in quiet. Afterwards as we all stirred and shared our thoughts I discovered I wasn't alone!

It didn't many weeks to learn that if we came and prayed and left quickly, we didn't get nearly as much out of it as the times that we came and poured out our hearts to the Lord, and then lingered; learning to listen as He spoke into our hearts and minds and ministered to our spirits. Prayer journals or notepads and Bibles became standard gear for each of us, and we started not only to stay longer, but to learn to pray longer, as well.

I look back on those years as some of the most spiritually productive of my life. I was young and made lots of mistakes sometimes, but I grew in the Lord in leaps and bounds. Much of who I am today I owe to that time--that T.IM.E.!

Early in the year I shared a bit about the fresh start I was making, and the new focus I wanted for this blog, as well as number of posts on prayer. And then, as I mentioned on another post, Life Happened, and I developed a bit of "blogger's block" I think, thus the lack of consistent posts of late. To illustrate that, I first started this post in April. Not the end of April, the beginning of April. As in April 6th. All I had for 6 weeks was the title, and a few thoughts as to the content, but nothing concrete, nothing written.

But as I was writing in my prayer journal this morning, I had another epiphany--do you remember what an epiphany is? It's a light bulb moment-a "sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something". Not one I can share today, it still needs some mulling over--some Intercession.

And Meditation.

But the Expectation is already there.

I've always wanted A Virtuous Woman to be a lot of things to a lot of people, because that's what we, as virtuous women, are--many things to many people--wives, mothers, daughters, friends--and from now on, Tuesday T.I.M.E. will be a part of it, as well.

Until next time...

(disclosure--if you click on the link for the book I mentioned above and buy it through that link, I will receive a few cents commission on that sale.)