I was praying with a friend last week whose life isn’t going too well. She has a huge glaring problem which is completely out of her hands to solve – all she can do is pray and wait. In fact she’s been praying and waiting for about two years now and the strain on her is huge

As we prayed together, it was hard not to think of something I’ve been asking God for, something very close to my heart that I have prayed for years, to which the answer has been…. Zilch. Nada. Rien.

Gillian's story of healing from a life threatening heart condition is now on the site.

I love her story. It doesn't happen instantly like Becky's story about her friend's daughter with lupus, it happens via the skill of consultants, doctors and nurses - but what's moving is the sense of God's presence with Gillian - and his words to her - throughout a pretty harrowing time.

Have a read!

Thought you might like to hear about a bit of a breakthrough I had at Thursday Women yesterday.

We were doing a bit of mediation - you know the kind of thing? Relaxing, eyes closed while someone walks you through an imaginary scene. We were imagining writing something that was troubling us on a piece of paper and then leaving it at the cross.

Anyway, the woman leading said something (quite a small thing actually) which totally shook my world. This is it:

Leader: Picture Jesus.

[Jesus in floaty white robes and sandals appears in my mind]

I once heard a talk at a youth weekend where the speaker showed us a picture of a face cut out of a magazine. It was someone famous – I forget who, which is ironic considering what follows.

I was going to write about something completely different this week but the theme of ‘practising the presence of God’ has got hold of me and isn’t letting go. Something clicked for me last week when I was writing about prayer being somewhere where you live (if nobody else was inspired by that, at least I was!). I found myself sneaking sideways glances at God for the rest of the week, remembering that he was there, remembering that I belong to him. The payback for those few miniscule acts of worship was huge.

How easy are you finding it to pray?

The whole point of this site is to encourage you to pray - whether you've never taken prayer seriously before, or whether you're a seasoned prayer warrior. Is it helping? How are you doing?

I'm struggling. I have the perfect excuse not to pray at this time in my life:

Well I’ve had a completely stressful week. I had a car accident on Monday ... didn't get the guy's proper details stupidly and will lose my no claims bonus. The week continued with much hassle, trying to pack too much in and, due to my husband's work commitments, coping mainly on my own. On Thursday we managed to get to the St B's marriage course which was great, but arrived home to find that Tom (2.5 yrs) had been crying for 2 hours and Evie (4.5) had been sick on the baby sitter, a single male friend who may be put off having children for life (!) although he coped brilliantly.

We’ve just posted a new story by Becky under Sickness and Health called Lupus – you might want to have a look – and if praying is something you do, you might want to consider the request at the end…

Praying for people’s physical healing was something I always shied away from until very recently. I belonged to the ‘prayer ministry team’ for a while – you know, the caring-looking people who emerge silently from the congregation when folk go forward for prayer at the end of a service, who always have tissues to hand. (Actually, I could never find the tissues.)

Well, I was at the St B's New Wine Kid's conference today, with my trusty lap-top, handing out 'God answered me' cards to anybody who was kind enough to take one. So, if you've logged on as a result ... a very warm welcome. I had some great chats with some of you (bless you!), and was not surprised to hear that many of you have been affected by issues covered on the site, miscarriage being a prime example. So, enjoy the stories and don't forget to add your comments to the discussion. All you need to do first is register with the site, takes about a minute and is absolutely free ...

If you were one of the 200 women milling around St Barnabas last Saturday night to be indulged with food, wine and various therapies, you might have noticed our pitch nestling behind a jewellery stall. We were the ones with the very natty t-shirts (someone even offered to buy one) and the permanently surprised expressions. We couldn't quite believe we'd met our own stupidly ambitious deadline of getting the website ready in less than six weeks.