Prayers during a Pandemic: For Those with Babies on Their Minds

Our family is taking time daily to pray about the current global health crisis. Our prayers will likely reference the Christian tradition, but we’ve written with an ecumenical and agnostic audience in mind.

If you’d like us to pray for you, let us know. If you’d like us to write a prayer for you or for a concern you have and share it here, just ask. You don’t have to share your name if you don’t want to, and we won’t share it or any other identifying details about you here or elsewhere.

Today, we are focusing our prayer on people who are pregnant, those who have recently lost pregnancies, those who struggle with infertility, those with young children, and all the people who love and care for them.

Today we think of people who are pregnant, those who have recently lost pregnancies, those who struggle with infertility, those with young children, and all the people who love and care for them.We think of mothers and fathers soon-to-be, who recently are, and who yearn to be. We remember the people who love them–their children, their parents, their partners, and their friends. We think of the doctors, midwives, doulas, and many others who care for them. We especially lift up those who do not have the social or medical support they need as they face scary times without the strong care of a community or  healthcare, as well as those experiencing high risk or complicated pregnancies. We pray for them strength. 

We pray for those we don’t know. We pray for those we do, including [names of people who are pregnant, have recently lost pregnancies, who wish they were pregnant or had children, or are new parents, and those who care for them, including ourselves]. We hope for them calm minds, clear thinking, healthy bodies, and peace of heart.

We hope for assurance for all people with pregnancy and babies and young children on their hearts and minds that the fears they have are normal, and that, if their fears, depression, anxiety, or anger are too much for them to carry, they are not too much for others to carry for them. Our prayer is that they allow others to share their burdens, physical, mental, and emotional.

We receive a gift when others ask us for comfort and assurance. We are thankful for the gift of vulnerability that others share with us when they invite us into their lives and ask for our care. We seek to be worthy of that gift always.

Above, Hope II (1907) by Gustav Klimt. A pregnant woman bows her head, Three women at her feet also bows their head in prayer. Are they are in a posture of prayer? Of grief? Both? A small skull near her abdomen reminds us of the dangers of pregnancy, childbirth, and infancy, but the rich colors and patterns on her robe remind us of the beauty of the world. Klimt called the painting Vision but because it continues themes from another painting of a pregnant woman titled Hope, it is known as Hope II. Even this reminds us that the whole world is pregnant with possibility.