Sunday, February 26, 2012

Expectations and Frustrations

I've learned from reading Philip Yancey that he rarely states things as purely black or white, so his first prayer journal suggestion does not surprise me. He suggests starting with my past experience with prayer, my expectations, even my frustrations, in essence establishing a benchmark as I pursue this journaling. I suppose, like many, I think prayer has let me down. As a child I learned to pray like many children "Now I lay me down to sleep," graduating to "Our Father who art in heaven" some time in elementary school. For me, real prayer started when the priest in our church ran off with another woman after counseling her through the convalescence and death of her husband. Father Mosher had left his wife and four children, and somehow I thought God would want to reverse this travesty. As one of the priest's acolytes I had witnessed the birth (figuratively) of three of his four children. What kind of priest would do this? What kind of man? I prayed fervently night after night that he would return to his family. Around the same time I prayed often that my dad would stop drinking. At that age I really expected that God was listening and that He would respond. These were cut-and-dried requests in my opinion. So as time went on, a divorce was granted and the priest moved to another state, his wife and family moved away and my dad continued to get drunk. I think I must have gone back to the Lord's prayer after that, which wasn't much different than the lifeless "grace" said around the dinner table on Sunday afternoons after church. Later, in college, I prayed often for "Jesus to come into my heart" because that's what had happened to my dad and he had quit alcohol right on the spot after 20 or 30 years of drinking. These prayers are something I need to explore more fully but suffice it to say, they did not work any better than the one to bring a father back to his wife and children. One night in my own drunkenness, I angrily told God that if Jesus wouldn't come into my heart, then I'd invite the devil in. And boy, did he ever...

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