A Confession

I have a confession to make. I have fallen short of the status people have assigned to me as a prayer warrior. Lately, I've been struggling. Not really struggling to the point where I was ready to cash in my faith, but was definitely on a downhill slide. But now, I see that really I'm at the bottom of the hill, working my way UP. And it's slow. Painful. Difficult. But it's part of my journey. The hill is not my faith. (Faith cannot be scaled, climbed, or attained by effort on our part.) No the mountain I 've been facing is my own inclination to decay. My tendency, as all things on this earth have, to move from the complex to the simple (this is according to the 2nd law of thermodynamics if I am understanding it properly.) Now for a banana, that means rot; decomposition. For me, it has meant a paring down of a complex life, a busy life, a life jam packed with gifts....to what is truly basic. To the life of a person who has been stripped of abilities and who has to face pain and sickness daily. And these things, my friends, cause one to question what truly is the meaning of life.

I'm coming to grips with the fact that my daughter is leaving the nest soon, that I may soon no longer be independent in terms of my activities of daily life, that my marriage is struggling, and that I cannot even serve in my church as I once did. Heck, I can't even get down on my knees to pray anymore. And I do not have the memories of a long and happy life to comfort me in my old age. Nope. I am only 47 and they have, most of them, been 47 hellish years.

So what does this have to do with being a prayer warrior? I'm GETTING to that!

I was reading a blog post today by a friend from the UK who was discussing the situation in Haiti and talking about how, really, we are helpless in the face of that tragedy. And another blogger I follow, spoke the same sentiment in her blog today also. There is endless, "pointless" suffering in the world. And I share a tiny fraction of it. But by and large, we throw up our hands and feel overwhelmed and futile in our efforts to help. What can our mere $50 do in the light of the enormous need?

Today, the worship leader at my church spoke of his parents and their commitment to prayer for all those in their lives. And he made the comment, "And that's why, I think, that they are still here. God still has this job for them to do." And he went on to say that no one need have a wasted life, even if they are completely disabled and living a life which by outsiders' assessments, may be worthless and pointles; they can still pray.

So how am I going to tie up this mess of random thoughts, you ask, and make it into something coherent??

Like this:

I've been struggling with my life. With feeling pointless. With feeling cheated. With feeling like a useless person to God. And I never could describe myself as a person who shakes a fist at God (although I did one time many years ago), but they say that depression is repressed anger. So okay, I've been depressed. Even my daughter pointed it out. But I didn't know the source of it. Until these things all clicked into focus.

I've been depressed because I feel like I am a wasted life. So I really quit studying God's Word and quit really battering the gates of hell with my prayers. So today, when someone prayed for me in church (thanking God for me and calling me a prayer warrior), for a moment I felt special, useful (and the next moment felt guilty because I've fallen shy of that title lately). When the worship leader spoke about his parents and that their lives were possibly of more use to God than a minister or missionary...When my friend who took me out to lunch today, said that many people have read my writings and are blessed by them...I started to realize that my life is important. It is important because those prayers could not get prayed without me. And when we are faced by earthshakingly horrific situations like the one in Haiti, we are not useless or insignificant. We can pray. And who knows the repercussions of all those millions of prayers going up for the Haitian people? God does. And He probably has angels perched and ready to go to their aid, just waiting for our prayers to release them to their task.

So there you have it.
Didn't think I could do it, did you?