Oreos, a House, and More Money...Please.

I'm so sporadic with this thing - I feel certain you have all abandoned your efforts to read it. If so, that's okay. It's still therapeutic for me.

I had a good conversation with an old friend today. About life and learning how to lean on Jesus and how terribly painful growth is. She made this statement, "I think we've moved beyond pruning now. It's more like chopping down the tree and starting over." She's being challenged and pushed to grow a lot and is realizing that it never stops, really. The further into a relationship with Jesus you get, the fewer and farther between your periods of not being challenged are. Here's the tricky part: figuring out how to rejoice in the pain of the pruning and not wish that it wasn't real life. That's the part we, being my pal and I, haven't quite learned how to embrace yet - rejoicing in the chopping.

Later in the conversation she asked me about my writing and how that was going and this is what I said to her, "You know how there are times in your life when you feel like you have a lot to offer people? Like you have things to say that may help them or encourage them in some way. Then there are other times when you're pretty positive that you have nothing to offer - nothing encouraging or even challenging to say. Times when your pretty much just needy. I'm there - drowning in the neediness." She said that I should write about that because people can probably relate to that a lot more than a fountain of wisdom. So, there it is. Most days I'm struggling to keep my head above water because everything about my life is uncertain right now - and I do mean everything, and for the most part I'm just trying to make it from one day to the next without tearing my husband's head off or diving into a depression. Preacher Man's job situation is very awkward and iffy right now. He has made some decisions that are proving to be very difficult for me to live with and God has very blatantly asked me to trust Him by trusting my husband. Just what I wanted to hear.

Yesterday I shared with another friend of mine our current job situation and how much I'm struggling with it all. She was very understanding and listened so intently. I told her how badly I want a home - not necessarily one that I own, but a place where I can really "nest". Nesting is not really an option for me at the moment. And I want Preacher Man to make enough money for us to survive and save a little and maybe even go on a date now and then. And I want to be able to keep Oreos in the cookie jar. They are Preacher Man's favorite treat and it wasn't until recently that keeping them in the house became a reality. Because of the probable job situation, we will have to forgo the Oreos. That just makes me sad. I know it's such a little thing, but that's what I was feeling. So, my friend called me this morning to say, "I wanted to check on you and make sure you're doing okay today. God kept waking me up last night and telling me to pray for you. Oreos, a house, and more money. That's what He was telling me to pray for." I was deeply touched by her thoughtfulness, thanked her over and again for praying, and we got off the phone after a few minutes of small talk.

But that little conversation got me to thinking: I've prayed for all sorts of things. Peace. Strength. Submission. A gracious spirit. For Preacher Man and me to be on the same page. But not once have I prayed for the things that I really want. See, that's where I get snagged so often. I get so caught up in praying for the things I know I SHOULD pray for that I forget to pray for the things that I really want - the things that I'm complaining so profusely about not having. What about you? Do you pray for the things you want or for the things you know you should want? Do you think there is a certain way we should be praying? I'm asking because I genuinely don't know the answer. I mean people in the Bible prayed for the things that they wanted, for sure, but they also prayed for the things that God wanted. How do we get those things to align?