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24 hours left for prayer requests

So a few days ago, I talked about starting up a prayer thingy on Mondays, except I also wanted to open it up to everyone else to jump in with their concerns or bits of thank-yous. That offer still stands. I am poised and ready to pray big, people. Tomorrow evening, 9:00pm AEST.

Just as a taster, here are some that have already made it on my list:

  • Victims and helpers of the shooting at Newtoun
  • A personal celebration! (Except I’m waiting for the parents to officially say something first before I jump up and down with excitement publicly.)
  • Families travelling interstate and overseas during this time of reunion and/or church camps.
  • Families not killing each other after spending a week in each other’s company at said reunion.
  • Families separated by distance, by anger, by pride, by misunderstandings, by old family feuds, by unforgiveness, by cowardice… or any other barrier you know or can think of.

Got any other suggestions? Hit me.

Prayer Project! *squeal*

Mannequin in prayerSo I’ve been trying to reboot my prayer and meditation life, without

  • getting distracted by housework
  • falling asleep in mid-sentence while talking to God. (Happens more often than I’d care to admit.)

Somewhere along the way, I’ve lost the habit of meditating on God’s word daily. And when I do, I find it hurried and broken. This is something I want to fix, and it’s especially something I want to get into the habit of doing before I return to work c. February 2013.

I’ve therefore been using a couple of phone apps for short devotional snippets (works quite well because of built-in reminders!), but ultimately I want to get back into the habit of praying long and deep, alone. Tony and I do pray together, but I’m really itching to sit down once a week and do a solid.

(In the context of potty-training Arddun, that last sentence was rather unfortunate. But I digress.)

To help me along, I’m soliciting prayer requests. It’s like a gym class – always better to plan on going, knowing someone else is counting on you to show up. :)

Check out my new prayer page.

Rhyming prayers for toddling tums

Ah yes. Trying to get into the routine of praying with Arddun before meal times. We used to be so good at it, but somehow that’s fallen by the wayside. I’m also trying to get back in the habit of reading more books with her. We’ve been rather slack, and keep reading the same ones over and over. No wonder she’s getting bored!

One of the things I love about Koorong here is how cheap some of the books are. Managed to score a hardcover Rhyme Bible for >$15! Yes. You read right. It’s bible stories. In rhyme. How groovy is that!

In the spirit of making prayers and bible stories more entertaining engaging for Arddun, I’ve cobbled together a couple of “Ta for the Tucker” prayers.

*ahem*

BREAKFAST

Thank you for my cereal, Lord
And my banana too.
Thank you that we can afford
This special breakfast goo.

LUNCH OR DINNER

Thank you for my food so yum
And thank you for my healthy tum.
I pray as I begin to eat
That I remember to be neat;
Not throw my food right off my chair,
Or make a messy everywhere.
Please bless this home, please bless this meal
And thanks for hearing how I feel.

TTT – Good masters, good memory, good weather

It’s been such a long time since I’ve done a Thursday’s Three Thank-you, I know. And it’s not like I haven’t felt thankful since The Big C hit our shores. I think I’ve mentioned the scores of silver linings our recent trip illuminated, even while Tony and I struggled with roller coaster emotions, and a teething, jetlagged baby.

But I’ll admit, I’ve struggled to care enough to write about the blessings. Some days, my prayers feel like, “Oh my Holy God, why crazy cancer?! But thank you that my strep throat’s a lot better, and that you took care of last week’s baby-sniffles too. Amen.”

Gratitude, when up against intense angst and supplication, can feel a lot like emptying a leaky boat with a tablespoon.

Still – it’s good to give breath and words to grateful shivers. And I know that I’m being quite facetious – there really is a lot to my life for the heart to smile about. And so I bring you this week’s list.

1. Job masters that care.

It’s only natural for children who live interstate or overseas from family that they feel intense guilt, no matter which side of the equator their hearts or feet lie. And I spent quite a pretty sum of time in Singapore wondering if I had inadvertently made things Very Complicated by choosing a new life in Australia. It’s self-pity, I know. And completely counter-productive. Speculating over coulda/shoulda/woulda manages to achieve very little AND throw sand in God’s face. But I wonder all the same if I’d sold out on my mother, by casting my future with The Good Man from Australia.

And yet, it’s precisely because we live and work in Canberra that we were able to drop everything and run back to Singapore at a moment’s notice. Such a perfect blend of timing and situation meant that I could be with family during my extended maternity leave, and that Tony was able to take a month’s leave with little warning or certainty. I’m so, so glad we both have compassionate employers who are serious about work-life balance… and who are enlightened enough to understand which is the greater of the two.

2. Creating memories

One thing I found sorely lacking in recent moments of bewilderment and fear was the effortless recollection of scripture. It’s been ages since I’ve committed the odd verse or two to memory, let alone whole chapters. I can paraphrase many concepts and roughly tell you who I thought said what, where… but when the heart wilts, it needs to call on reserves. Doubly hard to do when the smartphone is dead or has no 3G reception.

So since last Sunday, I’ve started memorising scripture verses. My aim is to memorise a verse or two a week. I figure I need a whole week for the verses to worm their way into my intermediate and long-term memory, so it becomes so reflexive that I don’t need to focus on the individual word order anymore, but dwell on its meaning and comfort instead. I’ve also deliberately chosen translations that are more contemporary, to keep the cobwebs away. Some scripture verses have been quoted so often in KJV, ASV or even NIV, that I’ve lost sight of their beauty through rote and overfamiliarity.

I’m grateful for the wake up call, and the boot up the bottom. Long overdue.

3. Staying alive

Arddun and I were driving home this afternoon from the mall, when the heavens opened and we got caught in the hugest deluge of water I’d ever experienced.

Ever.

Do you know what driving on an expressway is like when you cannot see? Petrifying. And it wasn’t like the rain had built up over time so I saw it coming. Oh no. It was sudden, it was vicious, and when it hit our little car, it scared the living crap out of me.

This is why I need to memorise more scripture texts, because the only thing I was able to recite over and over in my head was the 23rd Psalm. Which is a great piece of scripture. If I were herding sheep. Or being accosted on all sides by nefarious men wearing dark cloaks and twirling thin mustaches.

So here I was, crawling across the expressway half blindly, trying to make out where I could stop safely on the side in peak hour traffic, while muttering to myself

The Lord is my Shepherd… I shall not want… He makes me lie down in green pastures – THAT I CANNOT SEE, LORD! He leads me beside quiet waters – QUIET WATERS, LORD! – He restores my soul. He guides me through paths of righteousness… or roads… if you could mark my lane a little clearer for me, thanks… for His name’s sake… and even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death… or Gungahlin Drive Extension… I will fear no evil… ; Nope, nothing relevant. Okay… let’s start over.

The Lord is my Shepherd… I shall not want… The Lord is my Shepherd.

He leadeth me. Or rather, we drove through the craziness and into Gungahlin proper, where there were patches of blue sky to behold and the mighty rain dried to a drizzle. And Arddun didn’t seem to notice the difference either way, because she had been chatting to herself and her toes. And my heartbeat finally slowed. And I was SO thankful. I am so thankful.

TTT – Like a prayer, like a pampering, like a pair of pants

1. People who pray with technology
This week, I got two text messages filled with love and practicality. It said I was prayed for, it told me what the prayer was about, and it had a pretty handy piece of scripture attached to it. Short, to the point, powerful. You know how you read a chunk of scripture over and over, and nothing quite sinks in? Not deep-and-meaningful like? And then you get sent one verse at just the right time in your life and – ka blam! Impact.

This was the verse:

“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”

Somewhere in my spiritual life, it got trendy to ONLY ask for strength to handle the come-what-may. Somehow, somewhere, it became the done thing to NOT plead with God. To not beg Him for a specific outcome. Not ask that it be A, and not B. Pretty please. Somehow, somewhere, the idea that we submit to God’s will mutually excluded the bit where I run to Him like a child and pester Him. To take what’s nearest and dearest to my heart and go… “Dad, this is my heart’s desire. Could I please have it?” Rinse, repeat.

I don’t know where I learnt not to ask for healing, but only for endurance. Not to ask for the removal of the impediment, but only to beg for fortitude.

So thanks for the reminder. And for finding the words, when my own brain lies still and rather useless at the mo.

2. Pretty vouchers
Arddun’s Christmas present to me: a very generous get-pretty voucher at a spa in the city. This, on top of another pedicure and facial voucher. Which is on top of my hair appointment this Saturday.

Well!

After feeling all mumsy and like a dag for months on end, it’s lovely to finally book in these pretty-me-up dates. The impetus is a wedding in late March and my trips to Brisbane and Singapore. Oh who am I kidding. I don’t really need a reason to book in afternoons of massages and pampering!

3. Hand-me-down Happies
Now that my weight and body shape have stabilised, I’ve had to take a deep breath and start throwing out things I can’t wear anymore. Which is about half my wardrobe, easily. And while I’ve been putting off the putting-aside because of laziness, the bigger reason has been my reluctance to pass on my clothes to complete strangers.

I donate regularly to Salvos and Vinnies… but these clothes spell history for me. And because most of these pieces have been with me since I was a teen, it’s been even harder to give away remnants of my past life in Singapore. These clothes aren’t just clothes – they’re memories of dates and break-ups and Sunday services and tertiary life and first jobs… They are one of the very few things in my house that came with me from Singapore. That were part of what I brought to our marriage home.

But then the Kirky girls have suddenly all grown up – and so I’ve found new clothes horses! It’s been happiness on both sides, because they get a new wardrobe while I see my clothes get a new lease of life every Sunday morning. Now complemented with gorgeous chestnut brown and strawberry blonde hair.

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