You Get What You Pray For

I’m an avid prayer.  And I’m a persistant prayer.  In the past three years I’ve prayed for Will to get an internship, for Will to get a job, for the health happiness and safety of those I love, for the chance to be near my family again before they age too much, for the opportunity to move and experience the world before settling in Asheville, then to let us get back to Asheville when moving seemed out of the question.  I’ve prayed for us to be comfortable and to be able to live life.  I’ve prayed for freedom from my little gray cube and the ability to work from home.  And I’ve prayed for our love and relationship to grow to a fairy tale proportion.

I’ve prayed all of these things with at least a nightly consistency.  I’ve sounded like a broken record.  I’ve always stopped myself from praying for specific things such as certain jobs or a life in a certain city because just before I whisper those words I’m reminded that by praying with such specificity I may be cutting myself short since God is the only one who really knows what’s up and may be planning something far greater than my simple human self can imagine.  I always conjure up memories of the book The Wish Giver, and I feel like if I don’t word my prayers just right my answer, although correct, will not be what I had intended. (Yes I realize God is not that cruel and knows the inner workings of my obviously befuddled heart)

Today (while sitting in my little gray cube as usual) I realized that it’s possible that these prayers I have been praying for may all be in the process of being answered.  Just not in the way I had ever planned.

In a month we will be moving to Asheville.  I may be taking on a job worked solely from the comforts of the barn with nothing but my laptop. In a matter of months we may be shipped off to a distant (or not so distant) land full of adventure and new experiences.  We will be comfortable and able to live life.  And although I wouldn’t quite describe Husband and I’s relationship and marriage as a fairy tale, we HAVE grown as individuals and as a couple in epic ways as a result of getting through the past few year’s struggles and will continue to grow as we experience this new life ahead of us.

Of course I had never imagined moving abroad or elsewhere would come by way of the military.  Or that the job that presented itself to me may be a little boring and with my same company, but a good trade off to be able to work from home.  I hadn’t expected for Husband and I to get through his schooling and the BAR with better attitudes and a much much deeper understanding of each other than we surely could have gained if we had had a normal routine and easy lives leading up to this point.

God didn’t answer my prayers in a cruel and unfair manner, but he did answer them in his own way.  It makes me wonder what’s the point in asking for anything in the first place, maybe we should just all let him have it all and enjoy the ride 🙂