I Really Should Stop Praying

If you're just joining the party, I'd recommend reading my first post as a primer, which includes a few disclaimers and housekeeping items of note.

__________________________

My friend Matt and I like to take up residence on occasion at one of my favorite spots in Columbus - the Chocolate Cafe (and I'm not exaggerating when I say their salted caramel pretzel brownies have the power to reduce me to tears of bliss).

We found ourselves there for dinner one night this past October, hashing out the ins and outs of life, pondering our jobs, our motivations, our apathies, our indifferences toward certain things in life. I expressed to him how I had been feeling that things just didn't seem to be adding up. I was bored out of my mind at my job. I had started pursuing a master's in seminary as an outlet for my brain, thinking if I turned to the acquisition of knowledge, maybe it would spark something in me, make me feel alive.

Something was off, I told him, but I just couldn't put my finger on it.

I don't know which of us said it first, but eventually words formed, giving summary to my feelings:

I feel like I'm sleepwalking through life.  

That conversation was providential, pivotal. 

Shortly thereafter, I wrote this prayer in my journal:

"God, bring life to the parts of me that are dead. Bring life and renewal. Come, living water, and flow through me. Stir in me. I want to feel your presence again. I want to feel alive. I don't want to be ruled by apathy, with everything feeling like a chore. Fill me, Jesus. Make a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."

In another entry a few days later, I noted Romans 4:17c, a verse I love, but had completely forgotten about, which makes this qualifying statement about the character of God, "...the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not."

Putting all those things together, I would go on to write this prayer, copying it to dry erase boards in multiple places in my house:

Every day, I kept praying these words to God. 

Stir where there is stillness.

Awaken where there is slumber.

Speak where there is silence.

Fill where there is emptiness.

Flood where there is barrenness.

Give life to the dead and call things that are not as though they were.

Over and over and over again, these were the words escaping my heart and my lips. 

And now here I am on the other side of that prayer. 

He is stirring.

He is awakening.

He is speaking. 

He is filling.

He is flooding.

He is giving life to all that is dead in me.

If only I had realized the power I had so blithely invoked.

Author Annie Dillard once noted,

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. ”

I do not regret that prayer started last October. As much as I joke that I should stop praying, given all the chaos it seems to have produced, those words flow just as easily today as they did then. 

That prayer is still the profound desire of my heart. A cancerous brain mass hasn't shifted those words one iota. I remember a friend from church texting me last year in the wake of her own health fright (I'm looking at you, Jennifer O.), and she basically said, "Whatever this is, if there's fruit from the pruning, I want it."

If there's something to be gained here, a refining in the fire that is for my good and God's glory, I want it. 

But perhaps I should have taken to heart Annie's words sooner and purchased a crash helmet.

Some may look at this cancerous brain mass and see death. 

But I serve a God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.

This is not death.

This is life.

The Waking God has drawn me out so that I can never return to a place of sleepwalking again. 

Time to lash myself to the pew and strap on the life preserver.

I understand better now the power I so blithely invoked. 

_________________________

Functional updates:

I'll try to carve out space in each post to provide updates on where I am in the process. So, if you're just here for the nuts and bolts, in the future you can slide straight here to the bottom and skip my idle wanderings above.

I noted this in my initial post, about how the doctors at the initial institution I went to for care have reason to believe I've had this brain mass for years. The doctor at The James also independently commented on the same thing, only further elaborating that it's likely that I've had this mass since my early twenties.

I'm sorry, but could you repeat that, doc?

Given the nature of this specific type of cancer, which is incredibly slow growing, I'm suddenly questioning the entirety of my adult existence and every poor choice I've ever made. 🤣 🤯

I've also decided to nickname my brain mass "Flash," after the sloth in Zootopia. 

_________________________ 

PS: Want to leave a comment? If you select "Anonymous," would you mind including your name directly in the body of your comment? That way I know who you are!