What Choice Do We Have?

Someone wonderful died this week and it's been on my mind ever since.

When we moved to the Midwest, we searched and searched through the good and bad to find a church that we could call home. The truth is, we didn't know any other way to meet people. We were out of college stage and we'd been married a couple years. Frequenting bars to lurk on people we might ask to hang out with us? It felt desperate. And weird.

We're Christian. Not specifically any denomination to claim, as we've literally visited or attended services in just about every Protestant denomination you can speak of. We like good music (a requirement) and a good community of people who are caring, considerate, and generous with their lives and actions. We also wanted to befriend people that we'd want our children to be around... because I was pregnant about five minutes after we touched down in Chicago from Germany.

This church we found. It's Lutheran (a new one for us). We have met some great people who have been so supportive of our heartaches and triumphs these couple years. We're thrilled that all of our living children will grow up with friends whose parents we admire and respect. One of the pastors of this church we attend was diagnosed with Stage 4 Carcinoma in November at age 55. And this past Saturday, he joined Andrew in heaven.

I shed quite a few tears over this. First of all, he was one of those realists. He always spoke from his heart and from a different perspective. He didn't appear to be overly conservative, but offered a fresh outlook on Christianity and life. He fit our style and although he didn't know us personally, we admired him greatly.

Fast forward to the next day, Sunday. The lead pastor spoke and basically admitted that he just thought for sure that God would heal him. That he'd be speaking on Palm Sunday and not him standing up there in his place. The message was about When God lets you down. Boy, did I feel the heat from that message and the well of tears from Andrew's death was refilled. Fresh. I appreciated his perspective. He didn't offer excuses for God not coming through. He just plain said that although God can let us all down, he still loves us. And to be honest, what choice do we have?

It brought me to tears thinking about Andrew. We laid in bed the other night talking about this message and how we prayed more for Andrew probably than anything in our lives. And yet, we feel God let us down. He's also been a great source of comfort and has been the center to finding wonderful friends. We all experience loss and sadness in life. We'll all die. I will just never accept death happening in such devastating ways and to such young people.

One year ago, almost to the day, I wrote a post about prayer. Not a lot has changed. I still pray, but it's definitely taken a beating. We still pray for B's health and life, but I'm not sure that really has much weight. We pray for peace, most of all. After all, what choice do we have?

Praying for the Pointless

I believe in prayer. I always have, but it's more for the comfort of our souls and growing closer to God that matters in the act of prayer {to me}. I'm convinced that what's going to happen will happen and we can't do a whole lot of begging or pleading to get those things to change. Sure, we can ask God for things, but we aren't guaranteed anything in this life (except death and taxes, right?). Praying for a miracle is nice, but I find it more beneficial to pray for comfort, strength, and guidance in a time of struggle. I didn't pray for God to bring my son back. He was dead upon arrival. I could do nothing to change that. I prayed and continue to plead with God that I might be given calmness, peace, and persistence to carry forward despite my sadness. I still pray for that. I'll always be sad. God isn't trying to change that and I don't want him to. I just want the strength to get up every morning despite my sadness. God's good with comfort and strength like that.

Since Andrew, my thoughts about prayer have changed. I feel like prayer need be less trivial. God seems to have better things to do than to listen to my prayers about it not raining on my vacation or healing me from a minor cough. Those things are going to work themselves out and no one is going to die because of it. They're just little bumps in the road we can handle. I just feel like other people in this world are suffering so much more than some of the trivial things we lay before God. I can't pray for friends who aren't getting sleep because they have a newborn who is (ugh) keeping them up all night. Oh how I have not an ounce of sadness or pity on them. I can pray for them to see the extreme blessing through the exhaustion. {An aside, I was reminded by my mom how brutally honest I can be--and often offensive in being so. I love ending sentences with conjunctions. Grammar gods must hate me. If you really know me, that's me in the flesh. No sugar coating, no fancy words. Just the real deal. It's not always nice and yes, I need to work on that because I truly don't like hurting those I love. And I'm not really trying to. It's a flaw, but one I sort of like and sort of hate all at the same time. The good news is that you'll always know what I'm thinking, right? Sarcasm runs through my veins.}

It's just, with prayer, I feel like we often pray in the "wrong" way. We ask God to do things that we already may know he isn't going to fulfill or do. Sure, I believe in miracles, but I also believe that they occur infrequently. And frankly, I believe that if God were to want to perform such a miracle, no prayer on my part would be good enough to warrant his grace, love, and gift to me. He does it because He wants to. I'm a mere mortal that has no divine power and little wisdom. I can just thank God for eternal comfort and pray for strength. Many people live life without muttering any prayer and are still granted miracles. You can't say they received the miracle because they were so fervently praying, can you? Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to "bad" people.

Rather than pray I "get the job" (not a real example. I'm not looking for one.), I pray for wisdom, a clear mind, and to be calmed and comforted during the interview. If the job is for me, I'll get it. That's already been predetermined. I don't think that by praying the job will just land in my lap because I begged God enough times, bargained with him, or any other reason. Because honestly... if I could have bargained my way to keeping my son, I would have given up every single material possession I own to see that it happened.

This whole prayer thought comes to me from a few books I've been reading in addition to realizing how transformed my prayers have become. I used to pray that God would make sure Andrew was safe, without defect, and was healthy. Well, he wasn't. Something wasn't right, and I don't believe if I would have prayed a million more times that God would have allowed the outcome to be any different. I cannot change the course of my life. If that were the case, I would pray about every little thing as to never run into an issue, ever. If I could pray that I will never become sick again, I would. Will I be spared of sickness, absolutely not. I will get sick. It's sort of expected. Maybe I'll add that to the list. Death, taxes, sickness.

My prayers have changed in both the way I pray and what I am "asking" for. Though God and I have been battling it out a bit (and in this battle, I've been provided with clarity on prayer, for instance), I am still praying. I just pray more for the way I handle life situations than for the actual outcome of events. So now for the title of the post. I touched on it a bit, but I'll drive it home right here. I believe we often pray for things that are trivial, and pointless. Why pray that God will allow your team to win the game when God isn't really causing you to win or lose? It's a prayer that should be changed to something like this, if it's worth praying about at all: God, give me the strength, determination, and persistence to play the best game I can today. That way, you're never disappointed and you're praying for the correct thing. You aren't going to win every game just because you threw God a shout-out.

To my understanding and belief, God doesn't cause bad things to happen, nor does he prevent them from happening. He is just there as our comfort source and divine strength when we feel as though our world has crumbled. He's got our back, but he can't cover us with a bubble for the rest of our lives. I believe he mourns along with us as our best friend and greatest support.

Totally my own opinions. It's the process of transformation I'm going through. It may not conform to the idealistic fundamentalist theology, but I'm not trying to fit a category. I'm just journaling, honestly, as always with whatever has been rattling my brain lately in this crazy whirlwind of baby sadness.