So my fingers smell of onions and spices as I type. I am not an expert on prayer. But I know this: a woman's prayers often go to God redolent with onions and spices instead of incense. Her prayers are often as much simple beseeching glances in God's direction as she bathes a child's feverish forehead as they are recited prayers in Church.
Because every woman, whether married, single, or widowed, has a lifestyle that revolves around the family she has made for herself - husband or children or grand-children or friends or church family or work family. And a woman lives on the front lines of her family's life. She works hard. And her prayer is often enough her work, her actions. God hears her prayers over the noise of a children's fight she's trying to referee or over the voices and music on her car radio as she drives to work.
She knows that God blesses everything she does for her loved ones because she tries to do everything with love. And if she loses her temper or doesn't get everything done that she wanted to, she trusts that God hears her and works beside her. If certain parts of her life are messy, she puts that part in His hands to straighten out the messes she's currently unable to untangle.
Because God understands a woman's prayers, a woman's tenderness. God says "Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you." (Isaiah 49:15).
A woman works in so many capacities. As she offers her complex, multi-layered life to God, God stays beside her, day and night. God's tenderness is in a woman's hands, as she puts on a crock pot at 7 AM, goes to work, comes home and helps with homework, mends ripped clothing, tries a new recipe for Christmas cookies, or bends over a patient as a Doctor or nurse on a night shift. God's strength is in a woman's heart as she explains her point of view to her husband in bed at night, or refuses to indulge in malicious gossip with her co-workers over lunch.
God gives a woman His wisdom so she can speak out for the vulnerable, the voiceless, as she grows involved in civic activities, or campaigns to become a Senator or Representative, or attends meetings at her children's school or volunteers at a soup kitchen or teaches illiterate children to read or goes on a cancer or autism run. Or, aged and infirm, her work is her quiet prayer.
But a woman also needs quiet time with God. Whether it's early in the morning before everyone else gets up and she sits with God and a cup of coffee, or late at night when the house is quiet, and she curls up with the Bible or Spiritual reading, she needs time to rest with God. Time to pour out her worries to Him. Time to sit quietly and let Him speak peace to her soul.
Even though she can always think of something else that needs to be done, she needs to keep that precious alone time with God intact, just as Mary took time to sit at Jesus' feet. It's been my experience that men relax at home more easily than women. I think it's because for a woman, her house is as much her workplace as the office is. She'll always think of another load of wash that needs to be done, another appointment to make, another part of her child's schedule to refresh herself about, or her own agenda for tomorrow. She still needs quiet time with God - more than ever, because she's never "away" from work. Some women's phones ring continually!
A wise woman is the heart of her home. She encourages her family to pray. A wise woman speaks to her husband about God, about spiritual values, even if he may not believe as deeply as she does, or believe at all. A wise woman knows that unless God is the foundation of her home, it will be riddled with problems, with cracks in its ability to be a place of love and fidelity. Her and her family's prayers are the mortar that cements that love and fidelity. As each person's name slips through her mind and she prays, that prayer surrounds her loved one with peace and protection, for this life and the next.
I am just a woman who prays, as you are. But I know that our prayerful actions and our prayerful hearts are much loved by God, Who calls each of us by name as a beloved daughter. God tells us daily, with a good mother's faithfulness, "I will never forget you."