Pow-wows and prayers

My mom, my sister Addie and I have a special ritual. Whenever we can find the time, we gather together in the kitchen after everyone else in the house has gone to bed and have a late-night meeting of sorts. We call it a “pow-wow,” and it is a special time for the three of us to share what is going on in our lives. Some common topics for pow-wows are the latest gossip, how each of our days went at work or school or sports, concerns we may have about the family, sharing memes or TikToks that remind us of each other, worries of our own, and more. Pow-wows started when Mom and Addie began staying up after my dates to hear the details as soon as I got home, but now they have morphed into regular meeting times to talk and laugh and be together, and, guess what? Our relationships have flourished.

When you talk to God, how do you go about it? I often find myself repeating the same prayer every night: “Dear Heavenly Father, I am grateful for this day. I’m grateful that I could go to school and work. Please bless me with a good night’s sleep in order to be rested for tomorrow. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.” Sometimes I add in other details about my day, but what you just read is the general picture of how my conversations with God go. It seems that when I pray, I tend to fall back onto rote and repetitive orations in order to obey a commandment, but God’s instruction for us to “pray without ceasing” (I Thessalonians 5:16) was a reminder to talk to Him. Like any good parent, our Heavenly Father want to hear how we’re doing. He wants us to share all the happenings of our life with Him, down to the most minute details.

The other day, I was ecstatic to discover that a necklace I had assumed was lost forever had survived a trip through the laundry in my pants pocket. However, the elation quickly faded when I remembered that my favorite pair of earrings bee, which had been in the same pocket, were gone.

I frantically called my dad and asked if he had seen my earrings. He replied that no, he hadn’t, but he needed to know if I couldn’t find them because that meant that they had gotten lost in the actual machinery of the dryer, and that could cause a very big problem. With a heavy heart, I combed the washer and dryer – no earrings were found. I searched all over my room in case I had misplaced them – nothing. I checked the pockets of my jeans – nada.

Finally, I closed my eyes and uttered a quick prayer: “Heavenly Father, I know this sounds so stupid, but I need your help to find these earrings. They are my favorite pair, and I don’t want them to damage the dryer. Please help me, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.” Almost immediately, a thought came to my head to search through the giant pile of clean clothes. It was so quiet and subtle that I was sure it was my own thoughts, but now I know that it was God pointing me in the right direction. I began searching, and found the earrings in a pair of clean sweats that I didn’t remember wearing this week. If I hadn’t gone searching through the pile, I would have worried about those earrings for a long time.

In the Book of Mormon, the prophet Alma says “Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good.” (Alma 37:37) Our God is a god who is concerned about lost earrings. Our God is a god who wants to hear from us, in all our doings.

I believe in loving Heavenly Parents. I’m sure that Heavenly Mother desires to hear about the details of my dates, all the who-likes-who gossip, and personal worries or heartaches. She is just as eager to listen to me talk about those things as my earthly mom. I know that Heavenly Father wants me to tell Him funny stories from work, homework woes, and my yearnings to improve and become like Him. They want me to be able to talk and laugh and be together with Them.

If we take the time to share the goings-on of our lives, we will naturally draw nearer to God. Try to make an effort to create a special time of your own with Him. I promise that as you work to include God in your life through pow-wows and prayers, your relationship with Him will flourish.

Avery Palenske is a high school senior whose favorite hobby has recently become playing bingo with other seniors (although they tend to be quite a bit older than she is). A hopeless romantic, she is absolutely obsessed with fairy tale retellings, and stayed up WAY too late Saturday night reading one… which made going to 9 AM church even harder than usual. But she loves being a part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints too much to stay home.