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| Colored pencils and gel pen |
I haven't prayed much in the last couple of decades. It's like having received this outrageously hi-tech, super expensive tool. I'm afraid to use if for breaking it and guilty for not using it because it's so amazing.
This super cool tool has been explained to me in so many different ways it almost feels like the instructions were written by the Cal-Tech science department:
- Remember when you pray you’re on holy ground.
- Pray without ceasing.
- Pray first thing in the morning.
- Pray over everything.
- Pray for an hour.
- Start with praise, then gratitude, then blah, blah blah.
All in all, I’ve never felt worthy of prayer. It seems like a one way din to God Who already knows everything anyway. Jesus prayed in the garden all night. Why? I mean, “in the beginning was the Word and the Word was God…” so Jesus, in that moment, knew everything, the how and the why. So what was He praying for?
This may sound like I’m leading up to some sort of big, personal revelation about prayer and how my prayer life has been reborn, (cue fireworks and a lightbulb), but it doesn’t happen that way. It’s been a series of puzzle pieces falling into place (albeit a puzzle the size of Texas).
I lost my mom last year. She wasn’t the type I could call and talk to about my problems unless it was why my biscuits weren’t rising or my sewing machine tension was off. I would have liked to call and get wisdom about being a wife and a woman but that just wasn’t her.
Puzzle Piece 2
One of my oldest friends sent me a coloring book this year for my birthday, “Coloring the Names of God” by Ann-Margret Hovsepian*. The first name of God in the book is
Abba. Hovsepian says, “rest in the truth that God loves you more than any daddy ever could.”Puzzle Piece 3
My own dad had a great deal of trouble in showing emotion and actively kept a relationship from developing. So, the idea of God as Father was a concept I couldn’t understand.
I’ve been very lonely for close, personal contact—someone who just focuses on me. I have very generous and available friends and family but, at the end of a long day of taking care of a sick spouse, the dogs, the house, etc., I’d love to crash on the couch with someone, put my head on their shoulder and talk about my day.
So, wiping away all the rules on the “proper” way to pray, I realize I can just “make a call” to my Abba. I can talk about my day, complain, worry, and thank Him for listening to me ramble on like a silly little girl. Is this wrong?
I’ve realized that if I hadn’t of called my mom for twenty-years and suddenly picked up the phone, she wouldn’t have cared what I wanted to talk about. If my dad had answered the phone, he would have betrayed himself for a brief moment with a higher pitch in his voice and even a, “It’s good to hear you. Here’s your mom.”
* I highly recommend “Coloring the Names of God” by Ann-Margret Hovsepian. I’ve been gifted dozens of coloring books but this one is so approachable. It’s arranged like a devotional—there’s a scripture, commentary, prayer, and reflection on a page opposite of a lovely design that can be easily colored in one sitting (or a dozen if you make things complicated like me). I’ve used colored pencils, markers, gel pens, highlighters, and watercolors.
