Here's My Petition - Where's My Answer?

A day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is no more than a day.

And that is how God marks time.
When I pray, I want answers now. Tomorrow at the latest. I want results that can be measured. A cause-and-effect relationship that clearly corresponds to prayer-and-answer.

God rarely works like that.

About a year ago, I met my sister-in-law at Panera Bread Company. Before our lunch date, I stopped at the Pauline Book Store and picked up a Rosary bracelet as a gift. My sister-in-law isn't Catholic, but I had the sense that she needed to begin praying the Rosary for her son (my nephew). She wanted him back in her life. She wanted her own prodigal son to come back. Her arms ached to hold him again. To know he was okay. To tell him she loved him.

And I felt that Our Lady wanted to share this burden with her. To be called upon to dispense the necessary grace that would bring the son back into the mother's arms. What better petition to entrust to Our Lord's Mother? I also know, from personal experience, how much the Blessed Mother wants to guide non-Catholics home to Mother Church. I was confident that Our Lady would intercede in a powerful way.

I picked out an amethyst Rosary bracelet and gave it to my sister-in-law, with more than a little uncertainty. What would she think? Was it too much? Giving a non-Catholic a Rosary? Suggesting that she pray this unfamiliar prayer? Encouraging her to think of Our Lady as a Mother who knows and understands?

I did it anyway. And I secretly hoped that God and Our Lady would work a speedy miracle. I wanted the answer to come so quickly that there could be no doubt. Maybe my sister-in-law would even want to become Catholic - if God got right on the petition. If the answered prayer came tout de suite.

But, no. She prayed. I prayed. We prayed for months. And nothing happened.

This week, something finally happened. My nephew called his mother. When he didn't get an answer, he hung up and tried again. And again. And again. Five times. Then he tried his grandmother. When she didn't answer the home phone, he called her cell phone. Finally, he reached his mother. He wanted to see her. He wondered if he could stop by for a visit.

When I saw my sister-in-law tonight, she was wearing the bracelet. The trouble is, while the answer which we had prayed for did eventually come to fruition, it came in God's timing. It takes some faith to be able to say I believe God answered our prayer. It's all too easy to think, well, maybe her son would have finally come around anyway.

And yet, I do know. I know it had everything to do with that amethyst Rosary and a Mother's anguished prayers and a God who hears our petitions. We both know it.

She didn't beg me to get her into RCIA class, but she's a little closer. And I'm not in charge of that journey anymore than I was in charge of my nephew's journey home.

All in God's good timing. I am only called to intercede.