At a few minutes before eight every Wednesday evening with a feeling of weariness and, saying to myself “if only I could miss this week”, I bow to the inevitable and set off. Forty minutes later I return home feeling calm, which is rare for me. What has happened? Was it a successful trip to the supermarket that has brought about this benevolence? Alas, no, they always leave me frazzled. It was in fact our weekly meeting of Mother’s Prayers. A fact I still find surprising. I have always been highly suspicious of prayer groups. I have no good reason to be, I just always have been and I certainly had no intention of ever setting up a prayer group so quite how I have ended up doing so is one of life’s ironies.

We started Mothers' Prayers at this parish about two years ago. The Mothers' Prayers Organisation is run by the Solace Community which is based in Kent. Telephone No: 01959 532505. The main emphasis is handing your children back to God, not in any airy fairy way but in the most practical manner. You allow God to work His Will in the lives of your children. By doing so one learns to understand that to worry and to try to take care of every aspect of your children’s lives is not necessarily helping the very people we are hoping to help i,e. our children! What I find extraordinary is that our imperfect prayers are answered in very practical ways. I have not found that to be so when I pray on my own. And because prayers have been answered in so concrete a way one’s trust in God is strengthened. And because one’s trust in God is strengthened one can give up one’s children more fully as time goes on and their lives improve because one is allowing God’s Will to be done - not one’s own will - but God’s. It is this simple fact that drives me out of the house on a weekly basis to place my children’s names into the basket that rests at the foot of the cross.

One would think that to have concrete experience of God answering prayers would be enough of a gift, but God has given more. He has also given the gift of friendship. When the group started I knew none of the other ladies who came. And may I emphasise that what we are running is a prayer group, not a discussion group or a group to exchange chit chat, yet there is a great bond between all of us who attend Mother’s Prayers because when one prays, one knows the best in each other.

So if there are any mothers and grandmothers out there who are interested, we meet every Wednesday in the Small Hall in the Parish Centre at 8.00 pm.