What You Pray For

The saying goes, "Be careful what you pray for." I've had people warn me to especially never pray for patience. But who would have thought praying for close girl friends would really bring down the sky?

While the past five years have revealed the insubstantiality of pieces of my identity - education, national citizenship, career, caretaker, family connections, church - it has been the last nine months that have tried to strip me bare, identities pulled away like the violent loss of a limb. And it started with a prayer for close girl friends.

Someone told me in the past few months that she doesn't know how I get out of bed every morning. The thought hasn't crossed my mind (although, having a coma has). I have horrible days and excellent days and days that just pass me by. My mom once said to me, during one of the past trials that, "Right now, everything is okay." Even though my future is unknown (isn't it always? Sometimes we just forget . . . and then two planes crash into two towers . . . a sister is deployed to a war zone . . . a sister loses her boyfriend to homicide . . . a church is told it has to close . . . a baby is almost lost during childbirth) and about as predictable as a rattlesnake, I can sit here and type and write and really, everything is okay at this moment.

And when things are too tough to feel okay, even in the moment, I hear Laura Binge's, a friend of my friend Megan, phrase "Just take the next right step." My brain will take off 50 years down the road, trying to predict how terrible or how horrible things are, reviewing how terrible I am and the things I've gotten myself into, and I try to back it up and just take the next right step (support my sister as she makes plans for my dad, suffering from Huntington's Disease . . . seek counsel on important decisions . . . make dinner for the kids and get them in bed for a good night sleep . . . put down the work and the housework and the anxiety and play cars with my son).

God does not fail us. In the midst of my sad mud puddle, I have found three amazing friends who not only sit with me in the mud and muck, but bring flowers to it, even when the best I can offer them is dirt covered smiles and thanks. They listen to every dreary detail of my life over and over again, will turn around and give me a hug and then ask to hear more. Even when I feel like it, I know that to them I am not too much, and more than enough. Through their presence, I am reminded that God indeed loves me, more than anyone else ever can (even as His wind tears away my leaves).