tandem bicycle

A tandem bicycle is a pretty neat thing - a bicycle built for two.

After my husband died, I had to learn to be the prayer warrior for our family. Or relearn that kind of prayer, really. Before we married, I had learned to fight in the spirit against the enemy. But then...

I don't know why, but for some reason, after I got married, I began to take the attitude that prayer-as-warfare was no longer my job - that it was my husband's job to pray like that for me and the kids.

So - I backed off. Stopped praying with him in particular. Left it all in his hands.

And then he died. And there I was, in a huge fix, getting the crash refresher course in prayer-battling!

And then one day, I saw inside my head a tandem bicycle. And how that fit with what had happened in my life. My husband and I - our marriage - had been us riding on a bicycle built for two. He had been on the front seat, both pedalling and steering - while I had been on the back seat. Not steering of course, for I knew that steering was my husband's job and I was mostly content to leave it to him. But gradually, gradually - I was not pedalling either. Just going along for the ride. Not helping him like I should have been doing. Not multiplying his efforts the way I should have.

There is a verse in the Bible that says that one can put a thousand to flight, and two can put to flight ten thousand. Doing the math there, it's clear that two together can face 5 times as many of the enemy as one alone. And that was what I was there for - to be the multiplier of my husband's prayers.

But I didn't. I slacked off on the job. And then when my husband died, there I was, stuck with a very large bicycle that I had forgotten how to make go.

sigh

Well... at least now I know better.

- posted by sheya joie @ 1:19 PM