A Mother's Prayer

By Brantley Watson

Tuesday mornings on the OLu campus, a small group of women can be seen through the two large windows that highlight Boardroom A. Often times, the eyes in the room aren’t looking at each other. Instead, they’re nestled between each mother’s interlocked fingers.

It’s not a time to chat about their sons and daughters. It’s a time to pray for them.

For the past two years, Dawn Bartos has led the OLu version of Moms in Prayer, a small piece of an international prayer network. Each year, at Back to School Night, the Moms in Prayer set up a table with a clipboard, where moms can sign up to join the group. For the 2016-17 school year, 35 moms were on the roster, but anywhere from 3 to 12 showed up on any given Tuesday.

“We don't need the numbers,” Bartos said. “We need the hearts ready to do His will.”

Moms in Prayer meets weekly on campus.

Using that mentality, Bartos and the rest of the Moms in Prayer have taken on the task of supplying prayers to all members of the Orange Lutheran family and beyond. And as the years go by, whether the group shrinks or expands, the Moms in Prayer have become a lynchpin in the fabric of the OLu community...whether people are aware of it or not.

For Moms in Prayer, rarely does a topic slip through the cracks.

“We even pray for social media,” Bartos said. “It’s really tough for this generation. We give our kids cell phones. We give them our last dime. But we also need to make sure we’re giving them prayers.”

Moms in Prayer has been in existence at OLu for over a decade but rarely does the group seek or receive recognition, mainly because of its dedication to the task at hand.

The group’s purpose statement is, “To pray for our children, staff and administration, trust God to answer prayer, focus on Him, and expect great things to happen.” No lobbying, politically or socially, is permitted. No gossip is allowed, and everything spoken is strictly confidential. Each meeting begins with open prayer and thoughts, before the moms begin to pray for the school, its students and staff, and members of the Lancer family.

Bartos usually seeks information throughout the week, such as the dates of missions trips, if any faculty or staff members are dealing with an illness, and so forth. She puts notes on her prayer sheet for the week and the group will pray about specific issues on a weekly basis.

“It’s important to pray for your own children, but also their teachers and their classmates and the school,” Bartos said. “If a student or staff member doesn’t have anyone praying for them, that’s what spurs us to do it.

“As a mom, I feel like I'm always nagging. Sometimes I don't give God enough control and enough prayer. And that's what Moms in Prayer allows us to do.”

One of the most unique aspects of the Moms in Prayer group is that many of those who are a focus of the group’s prayers don’t know that they are.

“You really don’t see what you accomplish, but that actually spurns us on more” Bartos said. “We have prayed for people every day of the year. I feel like I have relationships with people I don’t really know by just praying for them.”

Bartos has had two sons walk the halls of Orange Lutheran: Noah, 21, is a senior at SMU, and Matthew, 18, is a senior at OLu. And part of being involved with Moms in Prayer, at least for Bartos, is setting an example for her two boys.

“Prayer is something that can freely be done,” she said. “I can freely pray for you. It just shows my sons that it’s important to be faithful and committed.”

Although she is the leader of Moms in Prayer, Bartos doesn’t love taking the lead when it comes to speaking.

“I am not eloquent. God has given me the job to set the arena but he brings the moms that know the scriptures. We don't always know the specifics of what we're praying for, but God does, and He always delivers.”

Moms in Prayer, in addition to valuing motherhood, has become a sisterhood. On occasion, you will see a son or daughter in Boardroom A on a Tuesday morning. When moms can’t make it to the meeting, they will often send cookies or veggies with their student to deliver to their fellow Moms in Prayer. Other times, moms commute from as far as Temecula to make it to a few meetings a year, just to be with their fellow mothers.

And for Bartos, as the prayers continue to come in and flow out, there is one prayer that her and the moms never ignore.

“We pray every school has a Moms in Prayer. We pray for Moms in Prayer.”