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

Actually, believing god answers your prayer while ignoring the vast majority of humanity's prayers is quite arrogant. It indicates you believe you are so special that god can and does suspend the laws os the universe just long enough for you to get what you want...while god ignores everyone else.

ADCMS, I am in no better shape than the vast majority of humanity when it comes to prayer. What I cannot do on my own is what I pray for. I do not bother to pray for something that I can and should do. But there is so much that I believe I cannot change. Can you see that that is a problem, too? Have you never been overwhelmed by disaster?

What can you say to a child who is hungry who has not the power nor means to change a violent world around her, who cannot prevent the cruelty nor the policies that put such misery into her world? Should I tell her NOT to pray for a bread crust because she and I have the power to change it? Furthermore, she is arrogant to ask for a bread crust--it shows how superior she feels to the little boy next door who is as hungry as she is?

If LisaRose says she has never had a prayer answered and I say I have, I am prepared to be the fool here and say I am wrong about my opinion. It won't change what happened to me. It just means I'm silly. Or ignorant.

If I say I don't know whether the thing we call God is merely a coincidence or a phenomenon of string theory, it doesn't matter, does it? I refuse to ask God for a cure for my cancer, I think that is an unfounded hope.

I find in my wonderings about all these questions of God and prayer if the key isn't this: to ask for the power to love in hard situations. I wonder about this.

It requires the action to bring what remedies we can, to put aside selfishness. Certainly my own unformed intentions in my prayer helped me see my own selfishness. And no prayer that has since been answered has varied from that theme.

I too, have wondered if I am praying for help and being assaulted in any of the terrible ways that villagers in these countries have suffered: Nicaragua, Rwanda, Vietnam, etc. I wonder if I will love others still? Or will I become like the ones who rape me and brutally kill my children and my husband?

After God healed my spirit--or perhaps I did myself, whatever suits you--We, my little girls and I used to pray for "The boat people and all the little children" at meal times and bed time. I had heard that pirates in the South China Sea were boarding the overloaded boatloads of refugees trying to escape the horrors of Pol Pot and the retributions that were following in the wake of the SE asian wars. One particular account sickened me. a woman was left adrift in the ocean having beenwitness to the drowning of her children,the murder of her husband and enduring the gang rape of the pirates. At first opportunity we opened our home to sponsor some refugees. Yes, my atheist/agnostic husband did too. We had no utilities and it was a stretch for all of us (had a baby boy by then). Love moved us, prayer was a part of the matter.

The love that I perceived as God's gift of healing was possibly what you say it is--a natural occurance. But I have to ask for that love allthe time. My husband alternately praises me and complains of me. I am in a constant search to understand what this world is about. There has been a lot of trouble in my family. Drugs, violence, prison. And also much that is wonderful.

I dread my inadequacy. I do live with a measure of peace--but I have lived with a lot of violence too.

I am horrified as you are by the daily misery in the world, ADCMS. In small and large ways I can only understand that love may be the only portion I have to give. 33 years ago the woman in that boat was found by Christian missionaries. Was that a good or bad thing? It made me think for the first time-- what did they have to say to HER about the love of God? I doubted they knelt down with her to tell her the way of salvation. The horror is overwhelming. Is it better to love or not?

Do you really think me arrogant to pray that I can love people that treat me badly? Do you think me foolish that I cannot generate love in my own heart to do these things? I don't find myself able to do it. some day it may be found that people like myself were tricked into believing in god by their primitive prejudices. It may be so. But I am still going to pray and hope I am fooled again.

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 wonder a lot about prayers, LisaRose, how the answers come---or don't. I wonder ,too, about t he power of the mind and where and what God is or isn't. Whether prayer's answer it is a function of our own brain or of a being or power outside our brain. Why or how can work for one person and not another? Or, for that matter, how it will work one time when a particular person makes a petitions and then not "work" the next time that same person asks. What's that about?

I say God answered my prayer because the strange timing of things made me think it took place outside of me. But I don't know how it happened.I don't know what God is exactly--is he in our mind? Is God a universal principle of love and surrender into whose stream I fell for a time? Was is a cosmic incident that sometimes happens like the equinox or an eclipse? I have wondered about the words to describe these adventures of strange causes and effects. I wonder how that goodness that set me free couldn't or didn't keep me from the Witnesses. But there is so much to wonder at.

I have wondered if the power of thought is alluded to by Jesus as when he warned male disciples not to allow themselves to look lustfully at a woman because it effectively would make them adulterers. Or faith being enough to move a mountain. I don't think it is wrong to recognize the wild variation of outcomes. I do think it is wrong not to acknowledge that something is going on.

For a long time I was depressed not to have a theology to hang this stuff on. I have had other prayers answered. I am not able to understand how this god/mind action works. and some prayers just hang in the air for a long time getting faded and worn, nearly forgotten.

I can't grasp God not answering your prayer. If he answered mine then he must answer yours. so I don't get it either.

ADCMS, about the world's suffering---shouldn't WE DO something about it ? Whether there is or isn't God there are human policies that starve and kill children. The U.S. should quit with it's national day of prayer and fast once a week instead and send the money where it's needed or else press that the U.S. be less oppressive to third world economies. that's the relationship I have toward prayer and the starving oppressed people.

I told my own story--if people starve it doesn't make me a liar. I may not know how things happen. But starvation and cruelty--we need to do more than leave these people to pray for relief, we should help them however we can

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 surrender, the thread is back on track, ADCMS. Your point is well taken.

As an explanation not an excuse, I said i got in a bind about how to cast or edit my answer in a way that framed the events meaningfully. It was a strange situation, that time in my life. At least I didn't cut and paste :)

Before I even started I wondered if punkofnice would have preferred a pm from me. maybe that's the way I should have gone but --O,well...It's done now.

This thread is a heavy one. It needs to allow for being more than a skeet shoot . You know, where someone throws out a quick short example that is shot down even faster for "lack of evidence".

I hope others share their stories--and, personally, I don't care if they take a little time to tell it. It's hard to sort this stuff out.

PS. sorry to hear about your sickness Pervof a truth. I don't know how the economy of it all goes-- I got diagnosed with stage 3 anal canal cancer in February of this year (which is why I got to come back to this forum for awhile during treatment in town). I don't pray about a lot of the aspects of it for some reason. But like you, when the pain is exruciating I do feel hung out to dry, but then I figure that there is bound to be some pain for me as there is for others?I hope for you to find peace. It is elusive for me too.

62

This is my first time. Please be patient.

by Miss.Fit in

i have never posted before.

i have been lurking for a few days and have decided to give it a try.

the subject of child abuse caught my eye.

humbled

I'm glad you girls stuck together-- also glad you heard that God hated what had been done. Love of God and just knowing that love can be a great strength. You have come through a lot with that, haven't you?

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.