Veterans’ Prayers: A Hidden Part of Warrior Life: Veterans Day 2007

I’ve been a military wife for two decades; my husband USAF, 21 years, retired, now working for the VA helping vets get their prosthetics.

Not long ago, on a rehab ward, having gone to visit with two dozen vets recovering from injuries …I brought ice cream cones… a hit…. what laughing boy moments there still can be sometimes, the spirit of boy still deeply rooted inside the adult soldier, even though injured.

Later, in the visiting room, the conversation turned more serious: hopes and dreams, disappointments, perceived failures, visions and plans. I’d mentioned I’d been trained to pray by ‘the madwomen in black’ (the good Sisters of the Holy Cross). Some men asked, would I pray for them? ‘My specialty,’ I said, ‘the Angelus three times a day, every day of my life.’ I would be honored to pray for the men.

We requisitioned scraps of paper and everyone wrote down as best they could what they’d like prayed for. Some told me what to say, and I wrote for them. Then, I gathered up the papers, asked would it be alright if we prayed right now, out loud? And all assented.

I come from old country refugees and immigrants who prayed so loud in church that other more sophisticated people born in the USA would give us dirty looks. So yes!, the men and I did pray. We did pray big and wide and loud… with some pretty good counterpoint Amens and Right ons! and Yes sisters! flying.

One soul wept, saying he couldn’t pray. Someone greater with wings, put a hand on his shoulder, saying through me, ‘Tears are prayers, liquid prayers.’ By the end we all prayed in the rivers we stood in.

I promised that their askings would be in my prayers from that day forward, and asked permission, ‘Could I pass their needs onto others to pray for too?’ And they said, very much yes. And I have.

So I was thinking to share some of their prayer requests in a different way today, a way that most readers never see, a kind of hidden news of the goodness of warrior souls… just in case readers would like to, on this Veterans Day, have a direction to aim their prayers… fluid, rough, or otherwise.

You’ll see, what is being asked for is not material, but of this time, and also, eternal… which is simple in words, but more complex in another way: I think written prayer requests, (of which I have literally thousands from my travels to see and be with many different groups of souls,) contain inside a hidden story, each one. If you have inner seeing and inner hearing you can definitely hear and see the inner story of others who ask for prayers.

Here are some of what the men asked prayer for… any to be added are welcome here too:

Please pray for my daughter who is in prison, not in jail, but in a prison of alcohol. I am ashamed she got this from me. Please pray for my continued sobriety. Please pray for her to find the way out.

Please pray for all my buds, that they make it home in one peace. That their women wait for them.

Please pray that they will let me sit in this wheelchair all my life, that my butt will not wear out so I have to lie down on a gurney for the rest of my life.

Please pray for my son to be returned to me whole. He is lost and beyond reach.

Please comfort my mother over losing my brother. He’s in a better place, but we aren’t yet.

Pleas stiff the sumbatch captain who cheated me out of a 20 after poker game. No serious, keep him safe. I take it out of his hide when he gets home.

Please hold me and my children and my wife together. Please let me not let them down.

I would appreciate it if you would pray for me. I hope God understands that sometimes you need someone else to talk for you. I am in need.

Thank you for remembering in prayer that we will soon have another child. Everyone is tense. we lost our first to sids. I pray for you to continue in your work.

Please pray that my boy can get a stem cell transplant, and for me to find the place of peace that has eluded me so far. I know it’s there somewhere. If you could just pray that God shows it to me really big so I can see it. Or pray for me to get a spiritual magnifying glass.

Please pray that my father will speak to me again. We are on opposite sides. Thank you.

For my mother who is in a wheelchair too. For her to learn humor.

Prayer for the kids I met. All of them. Keep them somewhere they don’t have to see everything.

Please pray for those who do funeral detail. The boxes are heavier than just the bodies.

Please pray that God forgives me for saying the word F in front of my mother-in-law. She just about faints. Please ask God to give me another word. If he cant do that, just ask him to make my Mother-in-law temporarily deaf.

Please pray for a new road.

Pray to have these memories retired.

Pray that everyone can re-up into greater capacity. Pray for me to know the message I’m supposed to carry now.

Please pray for better painkillers, and big scissors to cut all the red tape.

I’ve been through a lot. We all have. Please pray that there really are ponies for all of us somewhere in all this horseshi-.

To which I have only one thing to say, a reverent and fervent Amen.