I guess I talk too
much... but Science Mike is writing a book and he asked for help from his
fans and facebook didn't like my comment so I am putting it on here in hopes that it will reach him, so here goes... he asked us to reply to him with the following:
1. A time you felt
like God answered your prayer.
There was a time,
probably three years ago now, my mom had a last minute procedure that needed to
be done it was supposed to be an ambulatory type surgery, we all expected her
to go home later that day. First, (I have no license) it was hard for me to
find someone to take her to the hospital because she wasn’t supposed to drive
for two weeks after the surgery. Out of a whim we ran into a friend who was
asking how we were and she offered to drive us to the hospital for the, it was
a prayer in the back of my mind that we find help… later after the surgery Mom
had a terrible reaction to the anesthesia, turns out she is probably allergic
or just has a bad time with it, seems she had a bad reaction when I was a
toddler or new born back in Cayman Islands so there was no medical history to
point back to it (she told me about it after the surgery, saying something like
“Oh yeah last time I had anesthesia I was throwing up”) needless to say I had
no idea about this bad reaction or the danger of it, and since the doctors in Cayman
Islands didn’t seem to communicate that to Mom… well let me tell you this way…
I got called back
to the recovery area before she was fully conscious, the nurse said Mom was
screaming in pain. She was simply praying in English (her second language) and the
nurse didn’t understand her or whatever. I am not sure if it was the
combination of like three pain pills the nurse gave her and the anesthesia but
Mom kept falling asleep and when she would fall asleep she would stop
breathing, her BP (which she had hypertension) would drop and her heart would
almost stop completely. I was alone, with my sibling refusing to answer the
phone (or couldn’t cause of work in my mind it was different) and I had no one
to turn to… Mom was steps away from death and I wasn’t ready to lose her. Who is
ever ready to lose a parent, right? But Mom is young and had so much more wisdom
and beauty to offer the world. Anyway, I prayed because it was all I knew to do…
soon enough Mom pulled through just fine and had barely any pain in healing
from the surgery. So I think that was answered prayer.
2. A time you felt
like God did not answer your prayer.
Oh, this is hard,
and I guess more personal…? Maybe I don’t wanna answer this one, ha ha… Um, well,
maybe something smaller, I prayed many times for my dad to stop smoking,
especially after he got emphysema, but I am pretty sure he is still a smoker. I
never hear from him now so it kinda became a pointless prayer and I stopped
asking God to lead him away from tobacco.
3. A time prayer
made you feel closer to God.
So… I have spent
years feeling like an odd duck, when I was younger and knew God but had no “community”
I felt like I couldn’t understand people in or out the church. Later I ended up
joining a church and felt like no one understood a lot of things about me and the
things I liked making… Soon enough I was going from church to church then I was
really close to losing my faith, with so many things that didn’t add up, to so
many people letting me down, misunderstanding me, and then not fitting in with
people who don’t care about God, yet understanding a lot of their world… I don’t
even know how to explain it now really… but I really longer for clarity, for
security in my identity, all of it not in fragments. I longed for a home. I
just wanted to abide in Christ, and have Him abide in me. Artists understood me
as an artist, Christians as a Christ-follower trying to be a “little Christ”, intellectuals
as a person in search of answers, and being okay with not knowing all, or
having any clear but definition to what I “believe” except what I have
witnessed and that knowing only part of what I think God is, is okay, and
finding Him in everything… anyway… I felt misunderstood and unwanted, wandering
in an endless sea, with no anchor except that I believe. I believe God is…
By some sort of
chance, researching music and how music is not “worship” and my deep
frustration and isolation because of what I see as a lack of community for
people who think like me, I was checking up on Gungor with no internet access
of my own and I ran into The Liturgist, a blog or something explaining who the
Liturgists were and why it all came about. A little time passed, (earlier this
year I suppose) and I was at my wits end, ready to turn away from everything I
loved and believed. Suddenly I had internet access and remembered the
Liturgists and now there was a pod cast and I listened to every episode all
summer. Suddenly my heart found its home again, suddenly a constant conversation
with, who I call God, what I consider prayer, made sense. Suddenly my whole
life started making sense again, and I found Him again, listening to strangers (who
now feel closer and more tangible than many in my physical life), suddenly the
body of Christ and everything I have known Him to be made sense again, and I
wept in my cubicle listening to a simple repetition of “My God loves me… My God
loves me… My God loves me…” Suddenly, my prayer for community led me to find
His feet again, and everything that didn’t make sense in my faith was wiped
away.
4. Any combination
of the above.
The very first time
I spoke to God was when I was a teen or child or somewhere in between maybe
twelve, thirteen…? I was listening to a song by Jaci Velasquez called Speak for
me and the words “Speak for me this my plea. Say the words I can't express. Sing
for me a heavenly melody that the people will be blessed, speak for me” hit me
somehow, deeply a way I could never explain then but later I would come to understand
as the presence of God, or what I like to call His presence. Because of all the
pain and hurt I had seen and learned about in the world, then, even as a child,
I asked this of Him “in my heart.” I wanted my words to bring life to others, I
wanted my life to bring about love and joy and peace to those around me, as
much as possible, knowing somehow I would fail but to do my utmost best and try
my hardest to so do… So I asked for that without even knowing what I was
asking. I suppose it was like a wish at the pit of my psyche, at the very back
of my mind and I never thought about it again… Within two years I was writing
stories, songs and poetry just out of the things I was learning in school and
seemed to love to do and soon enough it was all I could think about. I would go
to bed thinking of my stories, come home from school rush through my homework
to write the next scene, sing a melody over and over and over in the shower or
wherever else I was alone until I could write down the words to remember it
forever. Soon enough the drawings I did for just fun became another way of
communication, another way to give life to others, but I didn’t know it then,
or call it that. It’s been whatever amount of years since then (I am 31 now)
and really, that is all I know to do that I can say are my “talents” and
somehow I have grown to be a person that hears many tell her “you have a big
heart,” so I feel like (even as this feels so prideful to say) God taught me
much about love, and giving love and particularly communicating about love and
that is how I feel I best give love to others, so I think it was answered, in a
very long and roundabout way. Now I just got fired and have no way to feed my
family (my mother and I) so I am freaking out, but I have a lot of time to invest
in these things that I love that I asked for years ago, and I think kinda
molded my mind to SUCK at normal jobs, so I became what I asked for, even
despite what that means, but I did ask multiple times for God to help me
provide for my family and being less than three weeks away from probably being
homeless isn’t very much looking like answered prayer… however, answers come in
many forms and not always the way we expect them to, so I am not discouraged,
just scared out of my mind. Hope this helps, sorry I am so long winded.
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