Over a week ago while we were parked at a red light, my 3 year old noticed a man walking along the median.  She asked me, "Mama, why is the man holding a sign?"  I explained to her that he didn't have a job and needed money and food.  There were several "why" questions and I ended it by telling her that we can pray for him and that we can ask God to show us what we can do to help him.  That night while I was praying and thanking God for all the things he has given us, my daughter interjected, "that man."  She remembered the man on the street and wanted us to pray for him -- that he could "take care of himself."  Every night, ever since then, she has remembered that man during our prayer time.  I love this about my daughter.  She remembers things.  She cares about people.  Her faithfulness to pray reminds me what faithfulness is.  I'm so thankful for her sweet spirit.

Praying is so futile.  That was the thought that rammed hard against the walls of my mind the other night as I stared at the ceiling listening to my baby cry, yet again.  Why did she wake up?  She's supposed to be sleeping.  I've prayed the prayer for her to be able to sleep at least 10 times every day for the last 7 weeks of her life.  And yet, she still goes through every day with only two or three short 20 minute naps.  Nights are better usually because she'll have at least two sleep cycles where she'll sleep for a few hours.  But there's always those times when she won't go back to sleep after she wakes up for a feeding.  Now what?  God, why don't you answer my prayer?

It makes me feel so lost when the deepest depths of my heart is being poured out, and it seems like there's no answer in return.  Feels like I'm pushing hard against a brick wall, and it won't budge an inch.  I'm pushing with all my guts, my eyes are popping out and my hands are turning white, but the wall just won't move.  And so it seems that prayer is futile, and I don't want to pray anymore.  At least, that's how I felt the other night.  I was in tears from tiredness and feeling shunned by God... but even so, in the depths of that desperation, I knew I was cornered.  There's nothing I can do but pray.  There's no other way out of my dilemma but to pray. 

Because only God can grant sleep.

So why doesn't God answer my prayer?  I don't know.  If every prayer was written on a piece of paper and deposited into a bowl, I'm sure my bowl would be piled mountain-high, slipping down and overflowing with slips of paper with the same desperate plea over and over again.  God will need a new bowl soon.  And even though He won't answer me the way I want Him to now, I know He will one day soon.  He said "ask, seek, knock".  He said to pray boldly, courageously, unabashedly, and He WILL answer.  So I'll keep pushing hard against this wall until He keeps His promise to me.

When God enters into a space, He gives meaning and purpose to that space.  The result?  That though I had felt so tired and exhausted, His purpose-infusing presence gives me a new kind of energy.  So when I am tired from parenting and don't think I have enough energy to take time out to be with Him, I must remember that it is then that I all-the-more need to do it because He will give me an energy and strength that I'm missing.  There is a kind of rest in His presence that is so different from any physical kind of rest.  It's a different kind of peace.  He really does cause me to "soar on wings like eagles" (Is 40:11).

So how does it start?  How do I get back to that place of constant communion with God?  Honesty leads to intimacy, and a key ingredient in relationship is intentionality.  If you're not intentional, if you don't make an effort, then you are sunk. 

Some people don't think it's important to have a quiet time with God every day.  They have told me that, for them, prayer every few days is sufficient.  Personally, I've always been a proponent of daily quiet times - that extended heap of time with the Lord every day which sets the stage for constant communion all day long... but in the last few years, I've unintentionally lived out the opposite philosophy as I've only "checked in" with God every few days.  For me, it's contributed to a status quo existence of mediocre living.  Without that time with Him, it's hard for me to shake any subtle fears which leach onto me and ends up causing an inability to take steps of faith.  I'm tired of crippled living - of only being half of who I am destined to be in Him.  Who wants to be only half of their potential?  Who wants to miss the life they were destined for?  Surely, without constant communion with Him, I am only living a shoddy shell of His dreams for me.

Therefore, I take it back.  I claim it again -- a life lived in constant communion with my God. 

I remember Brother Lawrence writing that he treated this aim as an experiment.  If his mind should wander from God, then he would just bring it back to God again.  It's an experiment.  No need to beat yourself up.  As long as we are still in our earthly tent, it's a given that we are prone to wander.  To think otherwise would be to set myself up for failure, and I will never move forward in the way of faith.

In reference to having constant communion with God, Frank Laubach wrote, "I feel convinced that...there lie ahead undiscovered continents of spiritual living compared with which we are infants."  Continents of undiscovered spiritual living??!!  Sounds simply tantalizing.  I want to join him in his experiment of asking, "What, Father, do you desire done/said this minute?" at every minute... to invite Him to pour into my every minute.  Now that would be glorious living!  I want to fill every minute full of God - to open the windows and let Him in - to invade, fill, permeate all my life and all my being!

Dear Jesus,
It's been a long time since we've had a deep, meaningful conversation.  Well, we might've had one last week, but missing even one day with you feels like a thousand years have passed.  I feel estranged from you -- like you are on the other side of a Grand Canyon cliff.  If I'm not in constant communion with you (as Brother Lawrence was), it feels like I have to make use of this Bridge you've provided for me (again) and make that treacherous journey across.  I feel distant from you.  I feel embarrassed that after 13 years of knowing you, I'm still such an infant in my spirituality.  Why am I unable to keep in step with you at every minute of every hour?  Why is there still such a battle with the flesh?  My mind is not as much aware of you as it should be, my heart not beating in unison with yours, my spirit not responding to every nuance of your Spirit.  When "deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls", I can't seem to block out the roars and hear the deepest part of you calling out to the deepest part of me.  And yet my heart aches.  My days are filled with things I must do, finish and accomplish.  They seem so urgent and important, and they crowd you out.  And yet my heart aches.  I can continue on this pretense that life is manageable without constant, continual acknowledgment of your presence, but I am only tiring myself out.  Jesus, I need you.  I'm sorry for the pretense.  I'm sorry for the distance.  I'm sorry for always standing on the other side of the cliff when you've been waiting every moment for me to be right by your side.  I want to have deep, meaningful conversations with you again -- the kind that exists between old friends as they sit in the same room together for hours on end without ceasing...

When obstacles arise, is it God raising the stakes to show the extent of what He's capable of or is it God saying stop, cease and desist?  It's more natural to me to throw my hands up and chock it up as the end of the story, but is it?  Since Sunday's sermon, I've really been challenged to believe in the things unseen - to stop allowing circumstances to dictate reality to me but instead to allow the Spirit to tell me what's possible.  When I'm tempted to give up and take the logic of circumstances as my answer, I have to (tell myself to) stop, close my eyes and tune in to the Spirit.  Is God really saying no or is He saying go?  What's His guidance?  What's His instruction?  That's what I really want to know.

God loves it when we have the shameless audacity to believe Him at His word and ask Him for things that 'naturally' seem impossible.  When Jesus taught His disciples how to pray, He tells a story of a man who is already asleep in his bed.  When you, his friend, knocks on the door, your neighbor would be unwilling to get up to help you because he's already in bed.  However, Jesus concludes that it won't be because of friendship that he will eventually get up and respond to your request, but it will be because of your "boldness" (in the NIV).  In the TNIV, it says, "yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need."  (Lk 11:8)  In the footnote, it says that an alternate translation for those words would be, "yet to preserve his good name."  I imagine that knocking on the door so loudly in the middle of the night was "shameless" in that it could spoil the sleeping neighbor's name if he didn't respond.  God is saying about Himself that if we go out on a limb to pray and ask for 'anything', He will respond.  He will respond to keep His good name. 

After Jesus says this, He says, "So I say to you:  Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; those who seek find; and to those who knock the door will be opened."  Jesus really gives us an invitation to make bold requests.  There are no requests which are "too much" for Him.  Seems like most benefactors would set a cap and limit on how many and how great a request you're allowed to make, but not so with God.  He wants us to come to Him with shameless audacity, so that He may fill the deepest needs of our souls.  This story isn't about persistence but about boldness. 

I think I've forgotten how to have that kind of faith.  Spending time with our friend Dr. David L. on Saturday and hearing his stories about how God heals people through him through prayer (not surgery, but prayer), I am reminded that God's power is above and beyond what I believe He is capable of on a daily basis.  Providentially, Pastor Jamie said in his sermon yesterday that some of us (me) think that praying for something like healing is so "out there", so we avoid that and say that we'll just stick to sharing the message.  But to say that Jesus rose from the dead -- isn't that even more "out there"?   Seriously, if I believe that Jesus rose from the dead, why do I think it's impossible for Him to heal people if I pray?  Dr. David said, "God loves people who have courage to believe Him and step out."  I want to have courage...to have the shameless audacity to pray for the impossible when His Spirit leads me and to believe that He will show up.

I'm happy to report that I'm starting to feel a little bit better.  Thanks for all your prayers.  I'm still feeling nauseous but I haven't thrown up for a few days!  Now instead of throwing up from everything except crackers, I have found that there are certain foods that I really need to avoid.  Here's my list so far, which I will keep updating.

Foods I can't Stomach:
chicken  (this kills me because that's all we have in the house)
eggs (this was supposed to be my 'easy' food)
shrimp
non-fresh food (can't eat leftovers the next day - which gets expensive)
soup - broth made from bones (my comfort food!)
Indian curry (homemade from Patak's starter sauce)
yogurt
Pho (do I need to say how tragic this is??)
MAYBE spicy foods (flaming hot cheetos, salsa, will test it again)

The good news, though, is that I'm not so paralyzed by nausea anymore that all I can do is sit there.  (Yup, there were days on end where I'd just lie on the sofa staring at the ceiling because moving made me sick.)  Now I can actually read a little, so I started reading a book called Fresh Faith by Jim Cymbala.  He poses this question - what amazes Jesus, the all-powerful, all-sovereign, all-knowing one?  What amazes him?  Only one thing - faith.  He cites the two examples of the Roman centurion (Lk 7:9) and the Canaanite woman dog + bread-crumbs story (Mt 15:28).  Jesus was amazed by their great faith, and He granted them their request.  By contrast, when He went to his hometown, it was their lack of faith that amazed him and rendered Him helpless to do any miracles (Mk 6:5-6).  Faith makes a difference! 

I guess I've been having a bit of a defeatest attitude for awhile.  One where I've felt like, "Well, if God's gonna do something, He'll do it. If He doesn't want to do it, He just won't."  It doesn't matter if I pray or don't, have faith or not.  But I'm not a Calvinist.  Thanks to Pastor Cymbala, I am reminded that, deep down, I really do believe that when we have great faith, God responds to that.  His heart is softened by our earnest hearts and our childlike faith.  I need to have fresh faith.  I want to have such great faith that I might "amaze" God.

I arrived at the seminary early last night and checked my mailbox.  I found my first Greek exam in the box.  Just what I was looking for.  At the top of the page, I found a 1 followed by two 0s.  Apparently, I had only missed half a point and I got a 100%!  Can you believe that? 

After that, I wandered into the prayer room.  There's a clipboard in the prayer room with lines in which you could put prayer requests.  I flipped to the back where the old requests through the years had been placed.  I scanned the pages of names, page after page, and then I found it.  There was the entry:

"Mary Ann ---, 11/11/98, If God wants me to go to seminary, then He would open the doors (to Bethel)."

I just sat back and smiled with wonder.  

It's been 9 years!

I remember back then how badly I wanted to go to seminary.  I had only been a Christian for two years and felt certain that God had called me into the ministry --and I wanted to grow and learn as much as possible to be as useful a vessel for Him as possible.  But as badly as I wanted to learn in seminary, there were so many obstacles.  So I prayed and prayed and prayed. 

Fast forward 9 years later, and there I was sitting in the same prayer room waiting for my Greek class to start.  Amazing.  Sometimes God puts desires in our hearts. Sometimes He calls us to pray for them.  And sometimes it takes 9 years before He answers.  And now 11/9/07, I see why it was so perfect that He waited 9 years to make dreams into reality.  Now is the perfect timing.  Perfect, just perfect.  With God --how could I ever doubt it?