After Dad’s funeral, I found a little notebook in his desk drawer. It changed what I gave my husband for Christmas.

My dad was not a talker.

He worked thirty-four years at the same lumber yard. He sat in the same pew every Sunday. He fixed whatever broke, and he never once told me what he prayed about.

He went home to the Lord in the spring of last year.

The week after the funeral, my brother and I started on his desk. Warranty cards. Old tax papers. A jar of loose screws.

And in the top drawer, next to his reading glasses, a fat little spiral notebook. Every page was full.

Forty years of prayers, in pencil

The cover was soft from being handled. Inside, line after line, in Dad’s small, slanted pencil writing:

“Linda, job interview. March 14.” And next to it, in a different pencil: “Got it. Thank You, Lord.”

Linda is me. That was 1987.

I kept turning pages. My wedding. Each of my kids, the week they were born. Mom’s surgery. The year my brother lost his job. The drought. My name, over and over, for forty years.

And beside so many of them, that little note: Answered.

He never said a word. He just wrote it down.

I sat on his office floor and cried harder than I had at the funeral.

Then I thought about my own kids

On the drive home I kept thinking about my husband, Tom.

Tom prays for our children. I know he does. I see his head stay bowed a little longer at Thanksgiving. I hear him in the dark some nights, very quietly, saying their names.

But none of it is written anywhere.

Someday our kids will clean out his desk, the way I cleaned out Dad’s. What will they find?

Warranty cards. Old tax papers. A jar of loose screws.

Dad left forty years of prayers.
What will Tom leave?

Why Dad’s notebook worked

Dad didn’t write long prayers. He wrote a name, a need and a date. Then, when the answer came, he went back and marked it.

That’s all. A few words. But forty years of a few words is a whole life of faith you can hold in your hands.

Most of us forget what we prayed for. We certainly forget when God answered. Dad’s notebook remembered for him.

I wanted Tom to have a place like that. Made for a man, sturdy enough to last, and simple enough that a quiet man would actually use it.

The journal I found for Tom

I found a prayer journal with a page in the back called the Prayer Tracker. It works exactly like Dad’s notebook: write the prayer and the date, then mark it when the answer comes.

The cover I chose is called Faithful. It’s warm brown top-grain leather, with MAN OF GOD across the top, the words of 1 Timothy 6:11, and a big lion in profile, drawn in dark brown a few shades deeper than the leather.

The top-grain leather comes from Tuscany, Italy. It has a natural grain, and it develops a patina over time. Dad’s notebook got better with age. I wanted Tom’s to do the same.

And the front of the journal is for every morning. Each Daily Prayer page has the same ten short boxes, so he never faces a blank page:

1. Scripture Verse the verse for today
2. Things On My Heart what’s weighing on him before he prays
3. Adoration praise God for who He is
4. Guide Me where he needs God’s direction
5. Confession what he needs to set right
6. Teach Me what he wants God to teach him
7. Prayer Request tick Myself, Family & Friends, Country or Community
8. Lord, I Am Grateful For a few of today’s blessings
9. Lord’s Answer what came after he prayed
10. Application what he’ll do with it today

The pages have no dates printed on them, so a skipped day never wastes a page. There are 180 of them, about six months at one page a day. It’s paperback size, 5.7 × 8.3 inches, with an elastic band, a pen loop and a ribbon.

What I told him on Christmas morning

Tom unwrapped it and turned it over in his hands. Before he could say anything, I told him about Dad’s notebook. The pencil. My name. Answered.

He was quiet for a long time.

Then he opened to the Prayer Tracker, found a pen, and wrote our three kids’ names on the first lines.

“For them,” he said. “Someday.”

This spring

Our daughter Emily told us in May that she and her husband are expecting their first baby. Our first grandchild.

That night I saw Tom at the kitchen table with his journal, writing. He’s on his second one now.

I don’t read it. It’s his. But I’d bet there’s a line in the back now with Emily’s name and a date on it, waiting for its answer.

And someday, a long time from now, a grandchild of ours is going to open a drawer and find a stack of these.

Year after year of a few words. A whole life of faith they can hold in their hands.

Your husband prays for your children, too

You’ve heard him. Maybe at the dinner table. Maybe in the dark.

Give those prayers somewhere to last.