I hate small talk. Hovever, I love getting to know people. I haven’t figured out how to skip all the preliminaries when I meet people. I like to start asking hard questions from the get go- Like why did your mother divorce your father to marry someone 20 years her junior when she already had four children? Often people can’t deal with that upon our initial meeting so they just form erroneous impressions of me.
Working at SHS has been really interesting. Most people are about 35+. At first I didn’t really like working here because I was surrounded by what I considered old folk. We talk about how their kids (college students) and other age segregating topics, (how to diet when you have to cook for a family of 6). But now I love it. Well I could care less about the job, but I love working with older people. I appreciate their perspective on life and the difference in the conversations we hold. Sometimes they can be quite ruthless. I was discussing my dream of visiting every country in the world. One person encouraged me to give up that “foolish idea”. It didn’t discourage me cuz I’m young, impressionable and have the rest of life to figure out how to make it happen. It is so refreshing to hear how the other half lives as well as their belief, even though cynicism often shines through. They are not necessarily Christian , if anything most people are into Iyanla Vanzant and Oprah Winfrey but it’s nice.
So this morning a lady and I were talking. Cuz she noticed I looked sleepy (this is what started the conversation). This is actual a common occurrence in the morning cuz I have to be at work at 7:30 but I don’t feel awake till around 10ish. So anyway we talked for a good while because I’m always trying to figure out the departmental breakdowns and different roles we play. So anyways we started talking about her sons. Only has two sons, one works as a delivery person and the other one is going to trade school in San Diego. It seems that she spoiled her sons by doing everything for them. So I tried to give her pep talk about the disadvantages to spoiling you kids: it makes them hard to live with as roommates or spouses, makes them inconsiderate, fosters an attitude of selfishness… She’s like you’re right. And I say, well you still have a chance to change and allow your sons to become responsible individuals. Anyhowsers, I’m always giving parents advice on how to raise kids. But of course I don’t have any kids so my expertise is quite limited. I have two younger brother if that counts for anything. In addition I was the oldest child for 5 years until my older sister came along and reclaimed the role of authority.
I need a hobby. I’m trying to decide what I should do. You know? I need a great topic for conversation at work. Right now, or thus far, I haven’t engaged in any fun/ extracurricular activities on a regular basis. So what should it be? Mountain biking, wall climbing, concert-a-going? I don’t know. Hopefully something will just jump out an interest me.
Last summer 3 women and I did a bible study using Desiring God by John Piper as a guide. In our discussion of prayer we realized how small & selfish our prayer requests tend to be, but God is so much greater than we can imagine and all powerful. One of our passages/verse of reference was John 4: 10 which says “ Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." She misunderstands his statement and believes he is referring to the water in the well, when in fact he’s offering her a “spring of water welling up to eternal life." Now applying it to ourselves, we decided that we needed to start praying hard prayers . For instance prayers that it is only possible for god to answer and impossible for us to accomplish with our efforts and resources. That was such a new concept to me. Cuz once in a while I’d pray for the impossible but not truly believing that God could bring it to pass. So as a group we made a list of impossible prayer requests and placed it in an envelope and committed to pray for it for a year. I came up with 14 quite difficult requests, most of them pertaining to people hearing the gospel message or recommitting their lives to Christ. Those requests symbolize what is the ultimate, gift anyone can receive. Therefore I want everyone I know to be exposed to it. However, I haven’t been praying for all 14 requests on a consistent basis, because of short term memory and because I left the notebook where I wrote it down in another country.
Almost a year after concluding that study,, a pastor spoke on the topic of prayer. The Passage of Reference: Luke 11: 5-13. As he went through each passage illuminating nuggets of truth, I remember just dwelling over the concept of boldness. He kept talking but I was still stuck on that concept. So, all week I’ve been thinking about God’s goodness and my lack of boldness in approaching him. On Tuesday I got home and was rifling through a package my mom sent me of mail that’s been going to the house. In that stack of papers I received about 5 letters that my sister wrote in ‘93/’94 and a letter from a the summer bible study leader. In this envelope were the requests I had written on slips of paper. I couldn’t believe the timing of these two events. Since, I’m not a believer in luck/ conincidence, my new thought has been, why? What’s God trying to tell me? One thing is sure(was never in question) God’s timing and memory are perfect. It was awesome to see what those requests where, and how God has been at work and has answered many of the requests.