Influence

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It has been a long while since I have posted anything here. I have been busy completing three years toward my B.A. in English and my senior year is underway. My current class (Creative Writing) has finally given me the space to take off the tight harness of academic writing rules, and it feels SO GOOD!! After reading my first assignment, Mom and Daddy gave it their thumbs up and suggested I make it a blog post, so here it is. It is my story and their story. It's a little longer than my usual posts, but as with everything I have ever posted here, I pray it encourages you to run "up the sunbeam to the sun" (C. S. Lewis). "Follow my example,  as I follow the example of Christ." 1 Corinthians 11:1 NIV I sat above them on the stairs. Looking down through the window-like openings in the partition between the living room and the stairway, I listened to the basketball players, football players, baseball players, wrestlers, track athletes, both the lettermen ...

The Unwitting Drift and the Way Back

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So slow, so easy, the unwitting drift. Eyes all full of the immediate wave . . . and the wave on its heels . . . and all the waves upon waves after that, unaware I'm being taken slowly, surely further from where I should be . . . from where I meant to be.

 

Father, I want to be well!

I say it again and again, trying a new prayer on for size instead of the generic and inexact Lord help me!  I know, even as I make it known to God that I want to be well, I need to be more specific still, but it's a place to start, a place to launch, a place to set a new course.

I am not sick.

I'm just not healthy and fit and ready to rock the heck out of this gloriously gifted life I've been given.

I have wanted to be. I have wished I was. I have lamented and cringed in shame and yelled at the reflection in the mirror I don't even recognize as me.

I miss me.

I am living beneath my privilege.

"When he came near, Jesus asked him, 'What do you want me to do for you?'
'Lord, I want to see,' he replied.
Jesus said to him, 'Receive your sight; your faith has healed you.'”
Luke 18:40b-42 NIV

Jesus sometimes asked people to answer what must have seemed like an obvious question.

"What do you want Me to do for you?"

It wasn't because He didn't know the answer. It wasn't because He wanted them to grovel and beg.


Matthew Henry wrote of this passage, "Though Christ knows all our wants, he will know them from us."


Though He already knows what I need, what I want, better than I do myself, He longs to hear it from me, whether out loud, in a hushed whisper, or less than a breath lifting the needful thought up to Him.

" . . . ye have not, because ye ask not."

What if I ask not because I trust not?
At least maybe not enough.

Pouring out my need into the dust at His feet is the beginning of trusting Him and following where He leads. Yes, I risk hearing no for an answer, or sometimes having Him say nothing while I wait, but never asking is worse by far.


What do I want Him to do for me?

I want His dust on my feet. I want His breath in my lungs. I want His sight in my eyes. I want His heart beating its timpani-deep rhythm of relentless love in everything I do . . . everything I think, everything I eat, everything I write, every picture I take, every word I say, every prayer I pray, every movement of hands and feet and heart and soul . . . I want His love to rule the day!

I WANT TO BE WELL!


Riding the current of God's mighty and matchless love, no wave can knock me off course, no riptide can take me out of His care, and thrilling adventures await in His endless ocean of goodness.




Do you ever feel like your prayers aren't specific enough?
What would you say if Jesus asked you, "What do you want Me to do for you?"
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