Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Belief in Prayer

A few days ago, as I chatted with my sister-in-law about a new job that she was applying for, one of her regular patrons at her current place of employment came forward and proceeded to discuss with her that he would pray for her and that the situation, which she was torn about, would resolve itself exactly as it should.

He asked her if she believed that by praying for God to help with the new job, that she would indeed get the new job. She bumbled around, because she's torn about leaving one job for another. Yet his words struck something inside my head.

How often do I believe that what I'm praying for will happen?

Like how often I pray for something to happen, or for some guidance and I don't exactly get the response I was hoping for. If I even get a response. Apparently I'm giving up before I've even asked for what it that I want. Sucks to be a pessimist. Yet, I keep praying, but while I'm praying and hoping, there is a part of me that is telling myself that the odds of whatever it is that I'm asking for, aren't going to happen.

I've thought about it a lot the last few days, and I know that while my husband and I were trying to desperately to get pregnant and I was praying and bartering and begging with God, that a part of me believed that it just wasn't going to happen. Yet, while my friend Andrea has battled cancer the last year, as her health took a left turn and she ran into some complications, I stopped praying for a miracle, but instead that God's will be done. I prayed for peace for her and her family, I prayed for comfort for those that needed it, but never once did I ask that she not die. Simply because she would have been totally pissed at me for asking for that. Every time that I would pray for her, I could hear her voice asking me what I was doing when I would pray for a miracle. She wasn't praying for one, why should I be. I think that's why I've had...(searching for the right word here)...peace, comfort, even joy at the situation. Simply because she was okay with this alternative too. She's not in pain, she's not feeling guilty about missing out on her children's Halloween parties, and soccer games. I know that she'd rather have stuck around to watched her children grow up, she would be perfectly content with this alternative too as long as she knew it was what God's plan was.

I've had enough faith for things to work out for her and her family just like God would have wanted, just like she would have wanted, but I can't have the same amount of faith for my own life. Thanks to the misery of the last few months with my gallbladder, I had lost some weight, mostly because I wasn't eating. Thankfully (well not so much), I've managed to hold steady, and even gained a few pounds back. Yet the last few days, I've struggled. I don't like that number on the scale, and I've asked for strength. I need to get to a healthy weight, I want to get to a healthy weight, so I can be around and annoy my husband as long as possible. Yet, while I'm asking for strength to stick with it, part of me doubts that I'll ever do it. Which is probably the reason that I can't get the scale to move, unless I'm literally starving.

Part of me doubts that college will ever be more than a hassle again; that I'll never actually enjoy it again. School starts back next month, and for the first time since I started back, I dread it. Even with the lack of stuff to do at work, I just don't want to go back. I still want the degree, it's just lost its charm. Thus the crappy grades, lack of motivation to do homework, and general hate of it all in general.

Then there is the ever present infertility issues. Part of me wants to believe that if I lose enough weight I'll miraculously get pregnant. Yet, as I'm praying for strength to stick with going to the gym and eating better, part of me believes that it will never happen, and thus getting pregnant will never happen.

It's a vicious cycle, but someone has to stick with it. Although, for my sanity, I'd just as soon as it not be me.

So I've found myself wondering if by not having more faith that it will work out the way it was meant to, that in turn it's not working out the way it should.

If I don't believe that God can do it, then why should he prove to me that he can?

So, that's going to be my resolution for today, for tomorrow, and for everyday for the rest of my life; is to trust that God has my best interests at heart. I know he does, but I've got to learn to remove all doubts that between the two of us, I'm capable. Everyone else thinks I am, so I should too. I'm also going to have to believe his voice when he tells me to be patient; to believe that what I'm praying for will happen. That the child I so desperately want will come, that the weight loss will happen and the pounds will melt away, and that college will not steal my happiness, but add to it again. I'll resolve to have more faith in God and in my abilities and less doubt, because the only person who is being cheated and missing out is me.

Well, and my sanity.

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