A group of young moms gather on a warm tropical morning for fellowship and prayer, children wiggling around the fringes. At first glance, they could all be from one country, but when they speak it is obvious that they are from many places around the globe. Business has brought their husbands to this corner of the world, and they are raising their kids in a wonderful city, but thousands of miles from “home.”
We’ve been asked to talk about living overseas with children, schooling choices, creating a home in a place where you are the foreigner.
They don’t know us. We don’t know them. It begins slowly as we tell some stories and lessons we’ve learned. At one point we talk about dealing with the forces of evil, spiritual warfare in our home far from our own comfort culture. We suddenly touch a raw nerve. I notice tears on the cheeks of the young British woman beside us. The woman from India is nodding her head. Others move forward on their chairs, suddenly intent. We pause and let them talk.
The British mom speaks first. “We were on holiday this last weekend and there was a large temple area in the middle of the resort. It was frightening, and I realized that we all had headaches all weekend, but they stopped as soon as we came back here.”
“We just moved house,” the Indian mom says, “and we thought about praying over our new place, but my husband was leaving for a business trip right away and we didn’t do it. Then our little daughter began to wake up screaming in the night.”
“My husband comes is under such stress at work that he can’t sleep. The whole bed shakes when he lies down at night. I think I need to be praying more for him, and for both of us,” puts in a woman from Switzerland.
“I thought it was just us,” says a South African mom. “I think we’ve been under attack and I didn’t even realize it could be spiritual.” A Finnish woman puts in her piece too.
They circle the room and begin to pray for each other, reaching out to touch hands. They pray for God to give them the spirit of power and not of fear, to protect, guard their families, to be willing to open up and talk with each other about deep spiritual issues, and that they would consciously pray for others in the group. They pray for peace and for the ability to understand that God is their home no matter where He puts them.
As we get ready to leave different ones come and talk to us, thanking us for affirming them, for ministering deeply to their spirits. We leave and head down the steep hill to the transit system, recognizing that the Spirit was in the middle of the circle this morning.
