Posts by humbled

259

Prayers that God answers. Any examples?

by punkofnice in

when i believed in god i tried not to pray for anything selfish.. after a while i began to think that a lot of things i was asking my imaginary friend in the sky for were selfish for some reason.. i do not ever remember a single thing i prayed for ever being answered.

if there was the appearance of an answer it was because i did mental gymnastics to make it fit the delusion that god had actually answered me.

there was never an obvious message/answer from god.

humbled

I'll get this thing done as fast as I can.

Any one who has done "church" much knows how to read a parking lot. When we got to town there was no action in the church parking lot. Early to church:folks visit as they go in. Ontime: they saunter. Late: they trot. Really late: no one is there at all. this parking lot was dead and it was the last mass of the day. i asked my husband to wait while I stuck my head in the door. the service was half over.

I felt sick. My husband said'"No problem"he'd get me in next week. But it was a disaster for me--and worse--a betrayal.

God had been silent throughout all this engineering and plotting of mine--so it was silly to think of His doing me wrong. But at first opportunity I was telling him what a dirty deal he had done on the clock-winding--I told him that it was an easy thing for him to have had it be fast rather than slow. " I know how you do these things" and "What are you , really? a demon?"

At home that week the routine went as before. And I read the bible again. But now there were two stories I read and they meant something to me for the first time ever. I read that God forgave a man, David, who had killed and committed adultery. Why had he forgiven him? because he was genuinely sorry. No priest. And i could understand something else. Genuins sorrow is not an easy thing to arrive at. It had not been easy for me. Also David had NOT been told to throw the woman aside after he was accosted for his wrong.

The other story was the story of Abraham trying to kill his boy, Isaac, because he thought God asked him to. But god stopped him saying not to harm the boy, but said he was going to bless all nations for Abraham listening to him. I had tried to finish off my own marriage for God's sake, too. Had I understood God well? If God had stopped Abraham from killing the boy I wondered if I had understood God. One day I realized that God cared less about who I was married to than if I was going to let anything come between me listening to him.

So I promised then and there that If he helped me understand I wouldn't turn away ever again. I never wanted to live without him. And I would count on him stopping me from doing harm in foolish ignorance.

When we did a repeat of the last trip to town the clock was well-adjusted. As we drove down the mountain I told my husband about the two stories: the grace of forgiveness and the story of Abraham's listening. My husband still thought I was batty but glad to share a bed with me again.

We got to mass but no confession for me--I had God's forgiveness. In the service there was nothing extraordinary in any way until the priest gave us the sermon. The text was from Genesis 22. It was the story of Abraham. It was a story that likened Abraham's trust in God to that of a boy in a burning house: Hearing a voice call from outside to trust, to jump through the smoke to safe and strong arms of his father below. The boy can't see anything at all, but he jumps anyway. and the father catches him. I cried and cried through it because I knew for sure that God had finally gotten through to me. He had set me free.

And I don't know more or less than that.

I am glad for kindness and sad for the pain off loss. I don't know why 3rdGen lost her only son. It makes me love the huggers on the forum because I don't know what else more we can do than that when all goes badly for others.

It's quite a laugh that I know so little about God but will always be certain that he answered my prayer: "speak but the Word and my soul will be healed."

Thanks for the encouragement,((((( Lois))))

259

Prayers that God answers. Any examples?

by punkofnice in

when i believed in god i tried not to pray for anything selfish.. after a while i began to think that a lot of things i was asking my imaginary friend in the sky for were selfish for some reason.. i do not ever remember a single thing i prayed for ever being answered.

if there was the appearance of an answer it was because i did mental gymnastics to make it fit the delusion that god had actually answered me.

there was never an obvious message/answer from god.

humbled

My apologies to you, ADCMS, it's a problem to give a serious answer to a question that is seriously posed.

The thread will go the way of all threads here and die its natural death. My story will die with it, so no worry there.

i considered a separate thread when i realized what was happening--but that seemed inappropriate too.

It is a risk, to put oneself out once in a while. Perhaps I could be briefer and you could be kinder.

Maeve

259

Prayers that God answers. Any examples?

by punkofnice in

when i believed in god i tried not to pray for anything selfish.. after a while i began to think that a lot of things i was asking my imaginary friend in the sky for were selfish for some reason.. i do not ever remember a single thing i prayed for ever being answered.

if there was the appearance of an answer it was because i did mental gymnastics to make it fit the delusion that god had actually answered me.

there was never an obvious message/answer from god.

humbled

The long and the short of it is this: I hammered on God's toes is the best way I can describe my efforts. If memory serves now, I remember after getting the girls tucked in, sweeping a spot away from the heating stove in the cold room by the kitchen. For when the cooking was done we kept the doors all shut but for around the heating stove else the warmth dissipated so that nobody was warm. I remember thinking of the catholic idea of suffering to please God. Just waiting silently for him to notice me. It didn't seem to work. Or else my fervor just wasn't up to the amount of suffering he required. How could I know? He wasn't talking. I was flying blind.. I kept up these efforts and antics until the first slushy part of spring. It was like a dam had burst in me. I wanted God to give me a break, to make just a small allowance for me. But finally one day I realized how infinitely selfish I was to want God's help with MY life, MY marriage, MY little family when I hadn't given two ***** about the family I helped wreck.

I don't have the words at all to say how it felt to think of my wrongs. To admit them to myself. It was beyond shame the way it came to me. And I had no way to undo it. I had to talk to God about it. So I did.

I told him that I would do just what the priest told me to do. every bit of it. By the time my poor husband came up for R&R I was talking to God and determined to sleep in a separate bed.

That evening I remember seeing his face in the lamp light fall in bewilderment when I told him that I could talk to God again--and reminded him of the terms the priest had given me. I told him that I would clean and straighten out the chicken coop for my quarters so that I could still help on the farm and raise the girls with him. Like his sister.

He just looked at me and said it wouldn't work. and what could he possibly say to his first family--notwithstanding his ex had remarried too--how could it be that I was this crazy? To tear things up like that? I was so absolutely peaceful that even with that terrible announcement between us the night was calm. He told me that even though he thought counseling mostly a waste he would take me to a therapist--but he thought me too far gone.

Instead, poor man, he promised to take me to mass the next weekend for our provisioning trip to town. He put his trips and traps together for another stint in the woods before the weekend.

I was in catholic heaven on earth. My plan was to get to church before mass to make a thorough confession so as to receive Holy Communion and thus seal the deal with God as per the formula given by the priest.

I hauled and heated bath water the day before. Made sure everything was ready. Receive ample assurance from My husband that he would have the tire canins on the car to get down the bad patches of winter mountain road. The only logistical problem I failed to successfully plan for was our alarm clock.

As I said, we had no utilities whatsoever making the wind-up alarm clock the only device in the house that moved on its own --but not reliably. Without a radio announcer to call foul on its time keeping, it was something of an art and a math problem rolled into one to wind it each night before bed. There was a certain number of minutes one had to strike off or else add to approximate the hour and minute that the rest of the world kept. So I made plenty of allowance for slippagethat night and went to bed looking forward to my appointment with God in the morning.

To say everything went off like clockwork is to really tell the truth. Breakfast, chores, dress the kids and me. Bundled in the car, down the road on the chained wheels. I was Joan of Arc, St. Bernadette, St. Bridget --on my way to a life with God.

259

Prayers that God answers. Any examples?

by punkofnice in

when i believed in god i tried not to pray for anything selfish.. after a while i began to think that a lot of things i was asking my imaginary friend in the sky for were selfish for some reason.. i do not ever remember a single thing i prayed for ever being answered.

if there was the appearance of an answer it was because i did mental gymnastics to make it fit the delusion that god had actually answered me.

there was never an obvious message/answer from god.

humbled

When winter set in I was in sad shape mentally. (If this makes my story suspect, so be it :) My husband and I had all the usual struggles of two people in love and in marriage--and then some. He carried a burden of guilt and so did I. That's what I think. I had no way to lift the burdens of my life with the resources I had, and my husband could hardly stand for me to share my gloom with him. It registered only as doubt of my love or as a criticism of his providing for us.

Indeed, winter funds were slim. We had only a bit of landlocked timber that was marketable at the local saw mill. The stand of trees was down the mountain a few benches away and difficult to access during the short winter days. So with cold comimg swiftly on we decided he could log it alone if we slapped together a little log crib/cabin with a tin roof and a barrel stove for warmth .If he didn't try to make it down and back every day, he could pack provisions down to camp with the logging team--hay,grain and canned goods near a pond and thus make the most of the precious light, that brief window for his labors.

The little girls and I were alone in the farmhouse for those days he was gone. It was a risky way for him to work--laying down the timber, limbing it up and skidding it to a landing where it would wait until the road was either frozen enough or dry enough for us to grab cant hooks to get a load out for pay. But that's how it was. And those days alone with the children only was when I began my struggle to come to peace with God. Because I didn't know how to live my life any more. I wanted to be able to pray to Him.

Not that I was sorry for anything. That may be hard to grasp that I could feel some guilt but not any sense of real repentence. I had no idea or intention of changing anything. My religion supplied no context for the trouble I was in--unless I considered what the priest had told me.

Definitely not an option.

I thought of my quest more as a legal endeavor. In my mind there had to be a "loophole" some legal obscurity that allowed a person who really wanted back in the fold to get there without doing what the priest had told me to do. So I did something I hadn't done before. I found a bible among my husband's many books and began to read it.

It might have been actual Greek and Hebrew for all the good I got from it. None of it made sense. Although when my husband furloughed at the house, I read him bits from the Song of Solomon that we both enjoyed. And Ecclesiastes had the kind of secular wisdom in it that appeals to such an atheistic/agnostic as he is. But I couldn't find a provision for a sinner like me.

259

Prayers that God answers. Any examples?

by punkofnice in

when i believed in god i tried not to pray for anything selfish.. after a while i began to think that a lot of things i was asking my imaginary friend in the sky for were selfish for some reason.. i do not ever remember a single thing i prayed for ever being answered.

if there was the appearance of an answer it was because i did mental gymnastics to make it fit the delusion that god had actually answered me.

there was never an obvious message/answer from god.

humbled

The prayer that I scarcely prayed is part of what is called "the liturgy of the mass". It was one of the formulaic prayers that are said in Catholic worship services. Yes, I went to mass even though I was barred from communion. Also, as time wore on and I had my babies, I got them baptised. I was catholic through and through. The prayer I allowed myself is that one just before the bread and wine is consecrated. It is a short prayer riffed off from Mark 8:8 said by all attending: "O my Lord, I am not worthy to receive you under my roof, speak but the word and my soul will be healed"

I figured it was a legit prayer for me in my situation. Also it seemed like a prayer God might deal with.

The fall before the winter I'm telling about, a church-going couple (I still had a prejudice against "christians" who weren't Catholic) lent me a book about two old Dutch women who were put in a Nazi prison camp for hiding Jews. The story of their faith and suffering --and good humor--was heroic, I thought. Worthy of a Catholic saint even. I had to admit, it made me think--in spite of myself. I got to thinking that-had they BEEN Catholics--they almost certainly would be canonized or at least beatified--you know, put in the pipeline for sainthood. But, on the other hand, these two women thought nothing in their actions. One even died in camp. They felt their lives to be no more than an ordinary response to Jesus' teachings. They would have laughed at the notion of "sainthood".

And that's when it struck me. All they did, they did because they simply were behaving as a Christian should. Saint=Christian. Christian=Saint. It was a terrifying thought. I realized I was no sort of Christian if it actually had to do with doing what Jesus taught.

259

Prayers that God answers. Any examples?

by punkofnice in

when i believed in god i tried not to pray for anything selfish.. after a while i began to think that a lot of things i was asking my imaginary friend in the sky for were selfish for some reason.. i do not ever remember a single thing i prayed for ever being answered.

if there was the appearance of an answer it was because i did mental gymnastics to make it fit the delusion that god had actually answered me.

there was never an obvious message/answer from god.

humbled

I'll try to fast forward through those 4-5 years. One problem I have doing that is showing how my life was radically transformed with the loss of the amenities of civilization i.e. running water, plumbing, electicity and telephone (no cell phones in the 70's) to a very rustic life in the Ozark mountains. I had finally married my husband in a simple civil ceremony when our daughter was a year old. A year later we had another daughter. We raised commercial tomatoes and did a small amount of horse logging. It was hard to make ends meet. So my husband and I accomodated the reduced finances by cutting back on non-essentials on the farm where we lived--all utilities. He introduced me to items familiar to his childhood: kerosene lamps, a well bucket, and a wood cook stove. These details of life are not presented as local color--but because they had a huge impact on how I dealt with the spiritual crisis that crested when our youngest was a toddler and I was as cut off from the outside world as I have ever been.

What happened that winter my husband shrugs off as "cabin fever"--and you might well see it as that also. None the less, I'll tell it as I understand what happened--a miracle and an answer to a prayer that I hardly knew I was praying.

It's true that I hardly knew I was praying. As I said previously, I figured I had no claims on God's time since my own attitude to the priest's counsel had not changed. I still justified my breach of his first marriage. But my oldest child talked now and was making childlike comments about the world around her that challenged me to answer her. I had an ambiguous relation to life and its ultimate meaning-- I wasn't really well formed in those things myself. The beauty of the natural world was all around me in the hills and in my experience of life and death of the animals, my second child was born at home and married life carried trials I found difficult. These things all jogged my spirit and I wanted to talk to the God I had thrown away.

259

Prayers that God answers. Any examples?

by punkofnice in

when i believed in god i tried not to pray for anything selfish.. after a while i began to think that a lot of things i was asking my imaginary friend in the sky for were selfish for some reason.. i do not ever remember a single thing i prayed for ever being answered.

if there was the appearance of an answer it was because i did mental gymnastics to make it fit the delusion that god had actually answered me.

there was never an obvious message/answer from god.

humbled

Maybe I wanted to talk to a priest because one of my co-workers had been trying to "save" me. This was a moment when race made me tolerant.

Al was black and I guess kind of evangelical. He learned I was Catholic, pregnant, unmarried and involved with a married man. He asked if I would mind if he came to see me after work to talk with me about God. This did not make me happy. But I didn't want him to think I was prejudiced so I said "okay".

When he arrived he talked about his own conversion--which didn't move me--he explained the way of salvation which I could have if I would only "claim Jesus Christ" as my personal savior. And I became acutely embarrassed when this great big fellow knelt down in tears and invited me to give my life to Jesus.

I couldn't. It was just strange. The whole thing was foreign to all my experience and thoughts about God and religion. It did move me that he cared enough to come and make a spectacle like that for my sake. He left without any results, promising to pray for me. Maybe it was a factor in my going to mass and talking to the priest.

So the priest. I knocked on the rectory door that Sunday afternoon and got to tell him that I was pregnant(in case he had not noticed) and intended to marry the baby's father as soon as he was free to marry me. I told him that my intended's present marriage wasn't really a marriage anyway, in my-not-so-humble-opinion. So my question to him as the mouth of the Church-and-God was this: for a person who was this kind of situation and eventually married, what provision was there to be a full-fledged Catholic?

I remember this long silence after I said my piece. He then repeated back to me the salient points of my case and then told me that--when I had done as I intended and married this man-- then I would be free to enjoy all the sacraments of the Church, bar none---as long as I lived with this man, my husband as a sister lives with her brother.

!!!!!!????? I looked at him and realized that he really was an educated true believer and probably on firmground in saying that. Also he wasn't open to negotiation. And neither was I. So I left.

That was the last counsel I got from the Church on the matter for years--until after I took it to God about 4-5 years later.

259

Prayers that God answers. Any examples?

by punkofnice in

when i believed in god i tried not to pray for anything selfish.. after a while i began to think that a lot of things i was asking my imaginary friend in the sky for were selfish for some reason.. i do not ever remember a single thing i prayed for ever being answered.

if there was the appearance of an answer it was because i did mental gymnastics to make it fit the delusion that god had actually answered me.

there was never an obvious message/answer from god.

humbled

By the time summer was ready to commence, I told my boss what was up and that I needed to go back home, tell my parents and many siblings that I was expecting. and who the father was. The father and his wife had not resolved the troubles of their marriage--especially now that I was expecting a child. They nevertheless continued together all summer almost to the fall when my baby was due. I found work in the town where my profoundly disappointed parents and younger brothers and sisters lived. I rented an apartment and didn't ask God for ****.

Interesting that, Catholic as we were, no one but my youngest brother talked to me about my actions and God. When I went home and told my family what the situation was and the room cleared out, he stayed. Just 9 or 10 at the time he had a smattering of catechism and the curiousity and openness of the very young. He just looked at me and said , really matter-of-act: "you sinned, didn't you?" And I told him, yes I had. And he left. I kind of felt relief just to have someone say it like that and to answer like that. funny.

Near my apartment was a Catholic church. Seven months pregnant I went to mass and was pleased to hear a sermon by a visiting priest (the regular one was on vacation I found out). He seemed smart and sincere and being a "temporary" priest I thought I'd see what arrangement I could make with God to be a Catholic and proceed with my plan to eventually marry the baby's father and be a Good Catholic.

Note: I'll hit submit button. I realize this is kind of a strange answer to Punkofnice's question, but I either have to answer this way or not at all. In small bits like this you can skip it as a nuisance if need be. For me, I either have to answer his question or not post on the forum any more. As I've said elsewhere, the answer I got to my prayer changed my life. So not to write is not an option for me even if you have an option not to read it.

259

Prayers that God answers. Any examples?

by punkofnice in

when i believed in god i tried not to pray for anything selfish.. after a while i began to think that a lot of things i was asking my imaginary friend in the sky for were selfish for some reason.. i do not ever remember a single thing i prayed for ever being answered.

if there was the appearance of an answer it was because i did mental gymnastics to make it fit the delusion that god had actually answered me.

there was never an obvious message/answer from god.

humbled

The truth of how sordid things had become was brought home to me when my lover told his wife who lived in another state with their children that he wanted a divorce to marry me. She resisted and moved back with him to try to resolve things that winter. I decided to clear out completely. Disgusted with myself. I moved to the neighboring state, found a job.

And found out I was pregnant.

Over the next months until the birth of my baby girl, I experienced a lot of misery. Yes, I had brought it on myself. And though that misery is not precisely what this story needs to dwell on, it is materially important to know how I viewed God and my own situation regarding talking to him about my wants and needs.

As I said, I was miserable. And as happens mostly with us, that is when we remember the Divine Helper.

I thought of HIM but reasoned that unless I was sorry for what I had done, he really had no obligations toward me.

In fact, I found myself entrenched in a conscious resistence to repentence and God when I had to get a TB test in relation to my work. Next to the clinic where I had my TB test I walked into a small streetside chapel of St. Mary the Magdalene. I entered because I felt an affinity with her (I had bought the catholic story-untrue-that she was a prostitute). But as I walked past lovely modern carvings of a reformed Mary, I reflected there was this critical difference: she had repented and I did not. Miserable months were to follow but I was not softened by the experience of it.

259

Prayers that God answers. Any examples?

by punkofnice in

when i believed in god i tried not to pray for anything selfish.. after a while i began to think that a lot of things i was asking my imaginary friend in the sky for were selfish for some reason.. i do not ever remember a single thing i prayed for ever being answered.

if there was the appearance of an answer it was because i did mental gymnastics to make it fit the delusion that god had actually answered me.

there was never an obvious message/answer from god.

humbled

As I said a couple days ago, had to work and couldn't respond. I had a good day at the market-- sold all my spoons and got more orders. (I don't pray about that sort of thing, btw.) Now I'll tell my experience with a prayer God answered.

when I was 12 I prayed to God to get a black kitten. And I got one!

Just kidding. My prayer story isn't easy telling and isn't so short. And as I am a poor typist and my cheap computer drops whole paragraphs into a void from which they never return, I will punch "submit" from time to time.

In 1974 I was 22, I fell in love with a married man. I was fresh back in the U.S. from Ireland where I had examined my Irish Catholic roots for near a year, working/stranded in Dublin. I had not been a good Catholic girl except in the sense that I had plenty to confess to the priest whenever I went to confession which had not been for some long time as I didn't really want to say who I had been sleeping with.

But I had some real compunctions about getting involved with a married man--as with most women who have a "friendly skirt", I thought it wrong, very wrong, to touch a marriage, even a troubled one. But I got over my reservations.

The experience was troubling. It was one thing to be a "free" woman of the 60's-70's, open in what you said and did, and very much another to meet clandestinely and dishonestly. Lying, cheating, stealing for all practical purposes. I have never felt good about lying. This was a bad matter.