Priveleged

Today I am writing about prayer. I have prayed more in my life in the last month than I think I ever have. Sad to say, that it has taken radiation to add this privilege to my life. I've always been a prayer warrior, but I haven't been one to spend a concentrated amount of time on my knees in prayer. I kind of converse all day long with God, wherever I am, whenever needed.

Radiation has been one of the most unpleasant parts of my journey. I started off scared to death because I once again had my security ripped out from under me. Once I recovered from that, I just plain don't like it.  In all honesty, I feel lonely there, & it takes all the restraint I have. I believe this has been good for me to experience this combination of loneliness & feeling degraded while at the same time being challenged. It causes me to lean on God, because it's just Him & me for 25 minutes Monday through Friday, except for when the techs scurry in & out like quiet little mice. They are adjusting my body, placing wet rags on me, & changing a plate that has to do with my radiation.

Today I had a new tech who told me to relax my arm. I did, & she told me to relax it again. I had to apologize because that is as relaxed as that arm gets. I really think she thought I was purposely not complying. If these techs did not whisper as they scurried in & out, I would't even know they were attending to me. I have to look away from them, & I have no feeling in my body. They draw on me with markers & do all sorts of things. I can only surrender.

So... I spend my time in prayer. I go through the alphabet, & then when I get to "z", I pray for certain situations in my life. I have come to treasure this time of prayer. It certainly takes away from my emotional pain & my physical pain. This evening I am going to a prayer service called "Pray for The Cure." One of my nurses invited me, & I think it will be as meaningful as The Race itself. Without prayer, I don't know where my sense of peace would be.

Since I was a  young child, I have daily prayed that I would grow to love God with all my heart, soul, mind, & strength. As a teenager, I prayed daily (in addition to my childhood prayer) that my boyfriend (who is now my husband) would love me at least 1/2 as much as I loved him. As an adult, every time my husband & I fought, I prayed that God would help him see things my way. I finally stopped praying this prayer because God never failed to make me see things through my husband's eyes.

Now, as a middle aged adult, I try to pray God's will both for my loved ones & myself. I don't pretend anymore to know what's best for anyone. Only God does. I just try to surrender to His will & put myself & my loved ones in His care. I wish I would have caught onto this in my earlier years. Instead of asking God for my will, for what I thought was best, I wish I would have just prayed for His will.

In the past, He didn't always answer my prayers in the way I hoped. For instance, I would have liked for my dad to have been healed from cancer this side of Heaven. When he fell & became brain injured, I would have loved for God to spare him  relearning the basics of life & having to grieve the death of his parents all over again because he didn't remember they were no longer living. When my dad began to recover from his head injury, I thought God would surely spare him of cancer, but He didn't.

As my children have grown, I've often asked God to spare them suffering. Sometimes my prayers were answered accordingly, but sometimes, I think God had a different answer. It might not have been what I'd hoped for, but only God has the whole picture. Sometimes, I believe suffering grows the human heart, & we reap other blessings tenfold because we have suffered. As I go to Pray for The Cure tonight, I will be praying with all my heart. I believe this is within God's will. I also know that my life is so much deeper because God has blessed me with suffering.