the morning is for sleeping...

I've been thinking a lot lately about Prayer...

when i was little, i was a prayer warrior. you can ask my mom... i loved praying... i looked forward to the night when my family would get together and pray before we went to bed. i loved it. i miss it. in my Critical Thinking class last semester we discussed prayer and how people do not even know how to pray anymore. their prayers are meaningless words puked towards God. "God bless them..." what does that even mean?! do they even know? most likely not. I'm not saying I'm not like this. so many times i have talked to God with no respect and no real thought. just throwing words towards Him hoping He'd find favor on my situation. so my thoughts have come down to this... If God has an ultimate will, that we can't change... why pray for some situations? it's not like our prayers are really going to change the situation. God made this world to work the way it does... if we don't take care of our bodies, chances are we'll get some form of sickness. then we pray so hard for God to take it away. we pray that He will stop the weather, make it nicer... basically... we're praying for heaven on earth. but that's just not the way it works. so then how should we pray? honestly, i know I'm probably wrong, but the best conclusion I've come to is, pray prayers of praise, pray for miracles, pray for God's will... but never be selfish... pray for humility. i still think we should talk to God. He's our Father. He loves us in ways we can never understand... He longs to spend time with us. also... we need to just shut up sometimes and be silent before God. He deserves our respect... we so often foolishly run up to Him blabbering on about who knows what... when sometimes we just need to be quiet.

i don't know at what point i stopped praying like a child. i think it was maybe when i began doubting. i remember very distinctly a few times i felt very strongly God was speaking to me, and when i told my parents, they doubted me. i think this had a weird affect on me... it was like, because they doubted my knowledge of when God speaks to me, i doubted myself, and then doubted God. I was discouraged in talking to Him. i soon forgot what His voice sounds like. Instead i spent hours writing in a journal... listening to my own voice.

all that being said... i want to be 5 yrs old again.



I'm thankful for the people in my life right now. one in particular. never have i ever had someone humble me so much without hurting me...get me thinking in ways i hadn't thought... challenge me in ways i hadn't been challenged... and we only just met. they're the ones that got me thinking so much about my prayer life....about my lack of commitment and fear of commitment...about truly being myself and remembering who i am, where i came from, what makes me, me...i think maybe, just maybe, if i keep hanging around them long enough, I'll become a better person.



this summer is turning out to be not so bad after all.......