Praying for a sick parent, when you are the one holding it together
Thirteen verses for the hospital corridor, the long diagnosis, and the slow years, with a short prayer to write for each. For the child who has become the caregiver.
There is a particular loneliness in praying for a parent. They were the one who prayed for you. Now you are in the hospital corridor with a phone full of siblings asking for updates, and the person you would normally call for comfort is the person in the bed.
The verses below are for that. They are quoted word for word from the World English Bible, and they are divided into three kinds of prayer, because a parent's illness is rarely one thing: the prayer for healing, the prayer through a serious diagnosis when healing is not what the doctors are saying, and the prayer for the slow years, when there is no crisis, only decline.
Each group ends with a prayer you could write down. Write your parent's name into it. Half the value is having it later.
Praying for healing
Start here if there is a surgery, a treatment, a chance. Scripture is not shy about asking for healing outright, and neither should you be. Notice that the verses ask for the doctors too, without saying so; the God who heals is also the God who gives wisdom to the ones holding the scalpel.
Heal me, O LORD, and I will be healed. Save me, and I will be saved; for you are my praise.
Jeremiah 17:14 · WEB
The plainest prayer for healing in the Bible. Say it with your parent's name in place of me.
The LORD will sustain him on his sickbed, and restore him from his bed of illness.
Psalm 41:3 · WEB
Sustain on the sickbed comes first, restore comes second. Both are asked for. Both count.
and the prayer of faith will heal him who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. If he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.
James 5:15 · WEB
The prayer of faith is a prayer, not a formula. James is telling the church to pray over the sick, out loud, together. Ask someone to pray with you.
LORD my God, I cried to you, and you have healed me.
Psalm 30:2 · WEB
Past tense. Written by someone who had already been through this and was healed. Keep it for the day you get to say it.
A prayer to write
Heal my mother. Bring her through Thursday's surgery and give the surgeon steady hands and a clear head. Sustain her on that bed, and then bring her home from it.
Through a serious diagnosis
Sometimes the prayer for healing is still on the table and sometimes it has quietly been moved off it. These verses are for the second situation, when the word is cancer, or the scan is worse, and what you are praying for has changed shape without your permission.
My flesh and my heart fails, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Psalm 73:26 · WEB
Flesh and heart fail. The psalmist does not pretend otherwise. What is left is a portion, and it is forever.
He gives power to the weak. He increases the strength of him who has no might.
Isaiah 40:29 · WEB
For the parent whose strength is going, and for the child whose strength is going with it.
He will call on me, and I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him, and honor him.
Psalm 91:15 · WEB
With him in trouble. Not instead of trouble. Read it as a promise about company.
The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves those who have a crushed spirit.
Psalm 34:18 · WEB
The verse for the parking lot after the appointment. Near to the broken. That is you today.
Even to old age I am he, and even to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear. Yes, I will carry, and will deliver.
Isaiah 46:4 · WEB
Even to gray hairs I will carry you. God speaking to people who are old, and to the ones who love them. Your parent is not too old to be carried.
A prayer to write
The scan was worse. I am not going to stop asking for healing, but I am asking for something else too now. Be with Dad in the treatment. Be his strength when his fails. Carry him, the way you said.
For the slow years
The hardest prayers are often the ones with no emergency in them. A parent who is forgetting names. A father who cannot manage the stairs. The prayer here is less for a cure and more for dignity, patience, and the strength to keep showing up. These verses were written by and for old people, and they know.
Don’t reject me in my old age. Don’t forsake me when my strength fails.
Psalm 71:9 · WEB
The old psalmist's own prayer. Pray it for your parent, who may no longer be able to pray it for themselves.
They will still produce fruit in old age. They will be full of sap and green,
Psalm 92:14 · WEB
Fruit in old age. Not the same fruit as before. Still fruit.
He will feed his flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in his arm, and carry them in his bosom. He will gently lead those who have their young.
Isaiah 40:11 · WEB
Gathers the lambs, gently leads those who have their young. There is room in that picture for the frail and for the ones caring for them.
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the LORD your God gives you.
Exodus 20:12 · WEB
The commandment does not stop applying when honoring becomes inconvenient. It is a hard verse for the caregiver, and also a dignifying one: this work is holy.
A prayer to write
Mom is forgetting more every month. Give her dignity in this. Give me patience I do not have, and let me honor her in the small daily ways that no one sees. Do not forsake her when her strength fails.
Keep every prayer for them in one place
A parent's illness lasts a long time and passes through many kinds of prayer. The prayer from the emergency room in February is different from the prayer in the rehab facility in May, and both are different from the one you will pray in the quiet years, if you get them. Most of those prayers vanish as soon as they are prayed.
This is what Prayed is for. Tag your parent as a subject, and every prayer for them gathers on one timeline, from the first ask to whatever the answer turns out to be. Each prayer comes back to you at three days, a week, a month and a year, so the plea from the corridor is placed in front of you once you know how it went. Nothing you write leaves your phone.
Write the first one tonight. Put their name in it. Date it. You will want it later, whichever way this goes.
Write the prayer. Prayed finds the verses.
Prayed is a private prayer journal for iPhone. Write what you're praying for and it matches three verses from the same Bible quoted above, on your phone, then brings the prayer back to you at three days, a week, a month and a year so you see what came of it. No account, no server. Writing is free forever.
Get Prayed on the App Store