Last Friday I closed my notebook for the last time. It’s a wide-rule composition notebook with a mottled blue cover, the kind that is always the last one chosen out of my school supply cabinet. Dog-eared, papers stick out of it and notes are written on the inside cover. There are three slips of paper, 73 names in all, annotated with nicknames and pronunciation notes. These are a year’s worth of prayers for the Class of 2020.

In March I laid out my story of deciding to lead this prayer time. The simple version is that I felt God was asking this of me, and so I obeyed. (Would that everything were this straightforward!) So here I sit with around 115 pages of handwritten petitions, copied Scripture and ancient prayers. And a heart full of wonder.

I intended to write a post to summarize my experience. “Three things I learned when I prayed for the Class of 2020 for a year” or something like that. I’ve wracked my brain, and started about five times, but the experience just wasn’t tidy like that.

It was my privilege to do this. I’m so grateful that God chose me, and I’m grateful that fellow parents were willing to do this alongside me.

I’m still terrible at praying. But I’ve learned that I can use other people’s words and it’s still good. Thank you to David, Paul, Augustine of Hippo, Origen, Francis of Assisi, John Wesley, and many others.

The praying really never stops. All week long I’d make notes for my Friday prayer, collecting requests from fellow parents along the way. But I never could sit down and write until Thursday night, sometimes quite late. Even last Friday, when I’d been preparing for weeks, I was writing in the final minutes before our 7:40 call. And it was inevitable that quickly after finishing I’d see five more things I wish I had said, too.

There is no secret sauce for keeping a schedule. You simply show up. Before this year, I hadn’t realized it truly was that simple. We had a busy fall and winter with plenty of family travel, but the call happened every Friday at 7:40 a.m. Eastern. Well, there was that one day when I got pulled over for speeding in Fairburn on the way to school. Oops. I got on the call at 7:50 thanks to a kind officer who let me go with a warning.

I wish I knew the Bible better. I think I would have done a better job of praying over God’s promises to us. Maybe that sounds weird if you know me; I’ve read through the Bible maybe seven or eight times so far in as many years. But this year has shown me that I need more time to marinate in sections of the Bible rather than only reading the whole thing. I’ve got the breadth covered: I need depth.

I will miss saying those names every week. We had a virtual baccalaureate service this weekend and it was beautiful to see all of the names given faces there. Do they know how precious they are? Probably not. But God certainly does. That’s even better.

This Friday will feel a little empty, even though I’ll strive to keep a similar prayer schedule in my life. I’ll miss the voices of other parents on our phone call. Heck, I’ll miss my not-infrequent struggles with the recording commands at freeconferencecall.com!

What’s next? I am pivoting a little, embarking on a new series of uncertain length, starting this Friday. I’ll post more about that tomorrow. For today, though, I want to say thank you to those of you still reading this. And thank you, God. I really am starting to understand Philippians 1:6: “He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.”