Lorraine's Story: Prayer As Process, Pattern, And Partnership

At the age of 72, Lorraine Mabry started a prayer movement right as COVID was beginning.

One day, Lorraine made corsages for women in Traditions for Mother's Day when a friend of hers named Wayne jovially asked, "What are you going to make for the guys?" She went home, thought about it, and crocheted bookmarks with prayers that she posted on social media for anyone who wanted one. 

Soon after, a woman she didn't know from Canada reached out and said she had been contemplating suicide that night when she read the prayer attached to the bookmarks and knew God was speaking to her. "And that's when I knew - it's not about the bookmarks, it's all about the prayers. And since then, it has been a prayer ministry."

Fast forward to this day, three years later, Lorraine shared how God spoke to her, 'You gotta do it different - you gotta post the instructions on how to make it.' In creative obedience, Lorraine posted the process and the pattern - never to sell, but only to give away - on her online page so that women around the world could begin making their own, sharing and multiplying this way of prayer to the people and places in their lives.

Since then, she's been asking people to share their stories of how prayer has been multiplying and bringing life in their unique areas! One story shared with her was from a lady in the U.K. who takes the bookmarks and prayers and puts them at bus stops. "She sits and watches people pick them up to read the prayer, hold it up to their heart and just smile, walk away and never know who did it. That's what this is all about - just spreading God's love."

From the women she's been able to prayerfully connect with around the world, she makes note and keep thems in a prayer box - two to be exact. "These are heavy prayers," she laughs at the weight of the prayer box, but also points to the reality of what people share with her as they partner together in prayer. "I try to get back to the ladies every once in a while. I'll pick somebody out [from the prayer box]. One woman said, 'You always seem to know just when I need someone to talk to,' and I said, 'It's not me, it's God. He was reaching out to you today and used me.'"

These are Lorraine's faces and places on Facebook, connecting her to over 2,000 women in 47 states and 37 countries. This all started because Lorraine was attentive and ready to partner with God and his people in unique and creative ways. From her crafty skills she was already using, to her friends calling out the good in her, to sharing something multiplicable, to exchanging stories from around the world of how God is moving through prayer - Lorraine is simply learning to say yes to God daily as she lives and shares a life of prayer!