When There Are No Words, He Still Hears.

Jesse is at a very sweet age (21 months) where he's learning to talk. I read somewhere that he's learning around 50 new words a day and soaking them up like a sponge.

But, a lot of the time, he is still too little to explain what he wants, or he wants it too much to find the words, and the whole thing just comes pouring out of him instead.

He shouts. He screams. He cries. He points across the room and wails, and I start working through the list.

Are you hungry? Do you want this one? Do you need a drink? Are you tired? Do you need a "duddle?" (his word for a cuddle).

Sometimes I get there. And sometimes I do not.

I run out of guesses. I have offered him everything I can think of, and he is still crying, still pointing, still trying to tell me something I cannot understand, and we both end up worn out by it.

I love him more than anything, but love does not make me a mind reader. There are moments I simply cannot reach what is going on inside him, and it is very frustrating for us both, watching him struggle to be understood and not being able to close the gap.

A lot of us are years past Jesse's age and still end up in exactly the same place.

Some things you go through are too big, or too tangled, or too painful to fit into a sentence. You sit down to pray and nothing comes.

Or the only honest prayer you have is not really words at all, just a lump in your throat, a weight on your chest, the urge to cry or to scream at the situation because that is the only language the pain has left you.

Thankfully, God hears that prayer and understands everything.

Unlike me with Jesse, He never runs out of guesses, because He is not guessing at all.

God's native language was never English. It is love.

He does not need you to phrase it correctly, and He never mishears. He reads the thing underneath the words.

He knows the feeling before you have found a name for it. Where I cannot reach my own son, God reaches all the way into you and understands completely.

Paul said it like this: "the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which can't be uttered." Even when your prayer is only a groan, Heaven receives it as a whole sentence.

So if today all you have is a sigh, or tears, or a silence you cannot explain, you have not stopped praying. You are praying in the oldest language there is, and the God who made you understands every word of it.

When there are no words, He still hears. He always understands.