Daily Prayer: When the Impossible Sits Right There on Your Kitchen Counter

Photo by Najib Kalil (@jeeebss)

"Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.""
— Matthew 19:26

I noticed a sticky note on the counter this morning — one I wrote to myself weeks ago. It just said call back with a phone number and absolutely no other context. No name. No reason. No clues whatsoever.

I stood there looking at it with my coffee getting cold in my hand, genuinely impressed by past-me's confidence that future-me would somehow remember what this was about.

Reader, I did not.

The Things We Think We Can Figure Out on Our Own

There's something funny about the way I approach life sometimes — like I'm a very competent project manager who just needs a few more sticky notes and a slightly better system. Like if I could just get organized enough, informed enough, strategic enough, I could handle pretty much anything.

Which is adorable, really.

Because I am also a person who cannot identify a phone number she wrote to herself three weeks ago.

Matthew 19:26 tends to find me in moments exactly like that one. Not in the big, dramatic moments — though it lives there too — but in the small, ordinary ones where I'm standing in my kitchen realizing that my own best efforts have a pretty firm ceiling.

What "Impossible" Actually Feels Like

When Jesus said this, the disciples were genuinely rattled. They'd just heard something that didn't compute, and they asked — almost desperately — "Who then can be saved?"

I love that they asked out loud. That they didn't just nod politely and pretend they had it together.

Because the honest truth is that most of us are walking around with a version of that question running quietly in the background. Is this going to work out? Can this actually change? Is it too late? Is it too hard? Is it too far gone?

I think about this with my daughter — grown now, living her own life, making her own choices. There are things I hope for her that I simply cannot manufacture. I can love her well. I can pray. I can be a safe place to land. But I cannot reach into her life and make the hard things easy or the long roads short. That part is not mine to do.

And somehow, that's actually a relief.

Handing Over What Was Never Mine to Carry

I think "with God all things are possible" is one of those verses that can accidentally become a bumper sticker — something we say so often it stops landing anywhere real.

But when I slow down and actually sit with it, it does something to me.

It means the things I cannot fix are not simply broken. It means the outcomes I cannot see are not hidden from the One who matters most. It means the ceiling I keep running into — the one made of my own limitations — is not the actual ceiling.

That's not a small thing. That's an enormous thing dressed up in a single sentence.

My husband and I were talking the other night about something we've been praying about for a long time. One of those situations where we've done what we can do and now we're just... waiting. Trusting. Trying not to refresh the metaphorical inbox every ten minutes.

He said, "I keep forgetting it's not our job to make it happen."

And I thought — yes. Exactly that.

Living Like It's True

I want to be someone who actually believes this verse on a Tuesday afternoon when nothing feels particularly spiritual and the sticky note situation is unresolved and dinner still needs to happen.

Not just someone who believes it in theory, or writes it in a journal, or nods when the pastor mentions it.

I want it to be the thing I come back to when I hit the wall of my own limitations — which, for the record, is a wall I hit with some regularity.

It's not a passive thing, believing this. It doesn't mean I stop showing up or stop trying or leave the sticky note there forever (though honestly, I might). It just means I hold my efforts a little more loosely. I do what I can do, and I trust that what I can't do is in better hands than mine.

Which, when I think about it honestly, is a very good deal.

A Prayer for Today

God, I have a list — and You already know what's on it. The things I've been turning over in my hands trying to figure out. The people I love and can't fix. The situations that have gone on longer than I thought I could stand, and here I am, still standing, which I guess is its own kind of answer.

Thank You for not needing me to have it all handled. Thank You that "all things are possible" is Your line and not mine — because honestly, I would have undersold it.

Help me believe this today in the ordinary parts. The waiting. The not-knowing. The places where I've done everything I can think to do and the rest is just Yours.

I trust You with it. I'm going to keep trusting You with it, even on the days it doesn't feel like enough. Because You are not limited by what I can see or what I can manage or what I can reach.

That's a really good thing. Amen.

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