I’d woken up at 3 am., something that keeps happening as of late.  I used to fret.  Now I just pray and ponder.  Or write.  🙂

I grabbed my phone and saw 23 notifications from Facebook.  I decided I’d catch up on that office work.  Then, I posted.  A random, worthless post about being awake.  But then I got to thinking what God had in His word about night and found a verse that described what He’d been teaching me to do when I’m awake and the world isn’t.  So I went back and edited that in.  And as I began to ponder I decided….”You’re stupid.  Go back and get that post off Facebook.  No one cares.  It’s useless. They’re sleeping.  And when they’re awake, they still won’t care.  Just shut up.”  It goes without saying, sometimes my pondering can be brutal.

I found the blinking light of my phone in the dark and hit the Facebook icon to eliminate my stupidity before anyone else noticed.  But someone had noticed.  There was a telltale red comment notification.  I cringed.  I was too late.  And then I read this.  “Please pray for me.  I’m having a difficult night.”  I let her know that I would and put my phone down and got up to walk.  I do that sometimes?  When I pray?  It seems to help me process.  I walk around my kitchen and out into my “wooden room” and back again.  It’s ok.  He goes with me.

 God?  This prayer thing.  You’ve had me in this school this year.  But I have questions.  Does it matter?  You already know she’s having a difficult night.  Why would You want me to tell You what You already see?  It’s not that I doubt that You hear me.  It’s not that I question that You want me to pray.  It’s just that it’s a mystery to me.  My friend gave me a bracelet for Christmas made from mud that says “pray” on it.  I like that it isn’t capitalized.  Capitalizing makes it seem formal and distant to me.  I want it to be common and muddy messy.  I’ve got it on my wrist inked with the tamarisk tree….this praying thing will be my legacy.  I just don’t have it all figured out.  Don’t need to.  But I like that I know I can ask Him, tell Him, ponder with Him.  He loves me even when I ask too many questions.  Sometimes He gives me answers.  Sometimes I just feel Him smile at me.

I find a book on my shelf  about prayer that I never finished and decide to start it over.  It looks and sounds all scholarly and I take small bites because it’s good but it’s the dark chocolate of books.  A little at a time.  I open it randomly.  “Ontologically, Jesus relationship with the Father is, of course unique, but experientially we are invited into the same intimacy with Father God that He knew while here in the flesh.”  I click a new tab on my computer and look up that word. “The process of being and their relations.”  I laugh at me and my word junkie self but I feel all smart learning something new.

I click back briefly to Facebook and see that Bobby Brady from the Brady Bunch is turning 55.  Sometimes?  Facebook and it’s information makes me tired and I feel robbed of something I can’t quite put my finger on.  Ontologically speaking, I have a complicated relationship with it.  But in the wee hours of this and other days, on any given afternoon and sometimes in the evening before signing off and returning to the world in front of me, I smile at your adventures, I share mine with you, I give you words for little presents from me.  And sometimes I hear whispered prayer requests.  And I know that some of this really matters.

But seriously.  Bobby Brady is 55??

I’ve just now finished watching a movie I’ve come to put on my Christmas list each year.  It’s a family during the holidays, all grown children come home to celebrate and the dynamics of bringing new people to the mix and how that plays itself out; all misunderstandings and the brittle awkwardness of trying to fit in and get used to one another, to something that’s different from what it’s always been.  There’s pain and humor.  Just like life.  The thing that was going to be kept hidden until after Christmas, though, slips out during a confrontation.  The mom is dying.  She wanted it not to color the holiday, the last one she suspected she was going to have.