The older she got, the more we saw evidence of our daughter Lucy’s disability. Language delays. A lack of eye contact. Repeated behaviors like twirling and hand flapping. Megan and I are both type A, so we rushed into action. We met with doctors and therapists, and navigated a pile of paperwork. Once Lucy received a formal diagnosis, we got busy applying for grants and government aid, looking for ways to pay for her care. That meant more visits with doctors and social workers, and even more paperwork. By God’s grace, nearly all the funding we applied for was approved. We reached what we thought would be a reprieve. We’d put a care team in place for our daughter, and we had the money to pay them.

Then, a few months later, we suddenly didn’t.

We got a letter in the mail saying the aid would stop. We could appeal, but after that was filed, there was nothing to do but wait. That summer, God taught me about prayer.

As my colleague Cassie Watson writes, “[God] often uses suffering to strip us of self-sufficiency or any other recourse.” He uses hardship to show us that prayer isn’t a life hack or method—even if the techniques sometimes help us. At its heart, prayer is a plea of desperation. For Cassie, it was trouble at church that brought her to her knees.  “Things were changing around me,” she writes, “nothing, it seemed, for the better—and I couldn’t fix it.” Those of us who have been in the pit of church hurt won’t be surprised to read how that hard season made such a difference in Cassie’s prayer life.

Yet it’s so easy to drift back into a posture of self-sufficiency when our circumstances are comfortable. Whatever season we’re in, may the Lord cultivate in us the humble desperation we hear in the psalmist:  “Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!” (Ps. 130:1–2). Lord, hear our plea. Help us learn to humbly wait on you.