Who Prayed For You?

One question at the Forrest Frank concert reminded me how I'll remember my mother's struggle with alcohol forever.

Last Friday night, I stood in a packed arena at the Forrest Frank concert in Los Angeles. It was one of those special evenings I’ll remember for a long time. Thousands of parents and their kiddos singing at the top of their lungs. Hands lifted in worship. Teenagers, grandparents, little children dancing in the aisles. There was joy everywhere you looked.

But the moment that got me happened before Forrest Frank sang one of his newer songs.

He walked to the microphone and asked, “How many of you believe prayer changes things?”

The Intuit Dome erupted with cheers.

Then he smiled and quietly said, “You’re in this room because somebody prayed for you.”

And then came the tears. Because in that instant, I knew exactly who had prayed the prayers that led me to that room.

My mom.

If you’ve read Love Life Sober, you know that when I was growing up, my mom didn’t drink.

She loved Jesus with her whole heart, and she made sure my brothers and I knew Him too. Every Sunday she drove us an hour each way to church because she wanted us to sit under the teaching of her favorite pastor. Looking back now, I can’t imagine how exhausting that must have been.

The light of Jesus shone so brightly through her. Our house was the gathering place. It was where my friends came for sleepovers, where everyone got ready for prom, where the kids from school knew they could knock on the door for a swim or a snack even if I wasn’t home. My mom welcomed everyone.

She volunteered at homeless shelters. She fostered children who needed a safe place to sleep for a few months. She anonymously paid the school tuition for a family going through a difficult season. She was generous in ways I didn’t fully appreciate until I became an adult.

She was also my best friend.

We had our Mother-Daughter Trips—or “MDTs”, as I called them. First to Disneyland and Palm Springs, and later, as I got older, to Mexico and Europe. Some of my happiest memories are wrapped up in those trips and the fun we shared.

Then, when I was twenty-four, something changed.

She started drinking.

Over time, alcohol slowly introduced me to someone I no longer recognized.

The woman who had once been full of joy became sad. The woman who had always encouraged me became critical. When Chris and I got engaged, she was furious. When we moved to London, she accused me of abandoning her.

It broke my heart.

And to be totally honest, I didn’t respond well either.

Instead of approaching her with compassion, I met her pain with my own anger. To cope with the confusion and grief, I drank too. Alcohol became the thing we both reached for, and in different ways, it damaged us both.

When my mom died, I often say I grieved two people. I grieved the mother I grew up with, and I grieved the mother alcohol had taken from me long before her funeral.

For years, it felt as though her struggle with alcohol was the final chapter of her story.

Standing at the Forrest Frank concert, however, I was reminded that before her struggle with alcohol, there were her prayers.

Long before alcohol entered our family, there was a mother faithfully asking God to draw her daughter close to Jesus. Long before I ever wrestled with my own drinking, there was a woman kneeling in prayer over my life. Long before I would one day write a book, start a ministry, or walk alongside thousands of women searching for freedom, there was someone quietly asking God to do what only He could do.

Those prayers didn’t stop working when alcohol entered the picture.

They didn’t lose their power because our relationship became complicated.

They didn’t expire when she died.

God kept answering them.

As Forrest began singing Somebody Prayed, I looked around that arena.

There were thousands of us standing together, but every single one of us had arrived there by a different road. Some had been prayed for by parents. Others by grandparents. Some by faithful spouses, pastors, teachers, or friends. Perhaps some had been carried to Jesus by the prayers of people whose names they will never even know.

None of us got there by accident.

Somebody prayed.

I couldn’t help but think about the unexpected beauty God has written into my own story. The little girl whose mother drove her to church now spends her days trying to point other women toward Jesus.

What the enemy intended to destroy has become the very place where God displays His redemption.

That doesn’t erase the pain.

It doesn’t rewrite the years we lost.

It doesn’t pretend the battle wasn’t devastating.

But it reminds me that alcohol never gets to write the ending.

Only God does.

That’s a lie the enemy loves to tell us, that whatever we’re facing today is the end of the story.

That the marriage will never heal.

That the prodigal child will never come home.

That we’ll never break free from the wine bottle.

That the prayers we’ve whispered through tears have somehow gone unheard.

The Bible tells a different story.

Our God is always working in generations.

The prayers you pray today may become someone else’s testimony years from now.

One day your daughter may find herself standing in a church service, a college dorm room, a hospital waiting room, or even at a concert, overwhelmed by the realization that God has been pursuing her all along.

Your husband may one day look back on his life and realize that grace reached him because his wife refused to stop praying.

Your friend may finally find freedom after years of struggle and never fully know how many prayers paved the road that led her there.

We rarely get to see all that God is doing while we’re waiting.

But He is always working.

In the years after I lost my mom, and after I turned to alcohol to cope with my grief, I believed the last decade of her life would define how I remembered her. I thought alcohol would become the final word in her story.

But my friend Forrest reminded me of something different.

Today, when I think of my mom, I see a woman who loved Jesus.

A woman who faithfully prayed for her children.

A woman whose prayers outlived her struggle with alcohol.

Those prayers became the catalyst for my own love for Jesus and, ultimately, for the birth of the Love Life Sober ministry.

Because she prayed, Love Life Sober exists.

Because she prayed, thousands of women around the world are discovering that Jesus comforts them better than alcohol ever could.

God has truly restored what the locusts have eaten (Joel 2:25). He has worked all things together for good (Romans 8:28). Even the things that were dark, broken, and messy.

The enemy wanted alcohol to become my mother’s legacy.

Instead, her legacy is prayer.

And because she prayed, generations of families are being changed.

So yes, Forrest.

I believe prayer changes things.

It changed me.

And by God’s grace, it is still changing generations.

Before you go, I'd love to ask you the same question this article began with:

Who prayed for you?

If someone immediately came to mind, I’d love for you to tell me about them in the comments below or inside the LLS Community. I have a feeling your story might be exactly the encouragement someone else needs today.