TALK WITH ME

It’ s my turn tomorrow at Sunday School (I don’t say teach, ’cause I’m not a teacher), and I’m preparing the material to present to the children. Tomorrow’s theme is “God Hears Our Prayers”. One of the questions I plan on asking the kids is how and when do you talk to God? And before I can ask them that question, I have to be ready to back it up with my own answers. Because kids like to throw your questions back at you, kind of like Jesus did (ever notice that, how Jesus often answered questions with a question? It probably drove his friends nuts….). So you must be prepared and be sincere, or else you’re left stammering and stuttering something silly, and then you lose your credibility in front of these little people who have very good hypocrite detectors.

So I was thinking about that, how & when do I talk to God….for a while, I was letting my spirituality take a back seat, so I wasn’t doing much talking. Things happened in my life that pulled me away from feeling I belonged, I saw things happening in the world, and as much as I can separate God from what organized religions claim and do in His name, as much as I know that what goes on in the Vatican is far removed from the simple truth of Love, I felt I needed to step back a little. I didn’t feel God was hearing me, and I figured why bother talking to someone I don’t feel is near to me anymore? In retrospect, I know that it was me who was pulling away, not the other way around. After years of feeling that God lived in me, I began feeling abandonned. I didn’t want to break all ties, so I intellectualized my spirituality. I went through the motions without feeling anything. But I didn’t talk to Him like I used to, if I prayed it was prayers that I recited at church, along with everyone else, or I would ask for patience and wisdom when I would hit a roadblock as a parent. So I was basically just talking to Him if I needed something, or to follow the pack.

I’m not sure when it began, but at some point not that long ago, in a real quiet way, I started talking to Him again. I did it in my car, while fixing dinner, I sometimes would remember a song that I used to sing at church, and sing it to myself as I fell asleep (okay, I wasn’t doing these things all at once, fixing dinner, talking to God and falling asleep while driving my car….you know what I mean). I wasn’t really praying to Him in the sense of praising Him, or giving thanks. Mostly I would just talk to Him, in my head, about my parents, about things that happened to me during the day, sometimes I’d just be asking question after question about life……

When you love someone, you want to communicate with them any way you can, as much as you can. Too much is not enough. And when you can’t see that someone that you love, you try to pour as much of yourself into your communication as you can, so that the person can feel how much you love them. You call, you write letters, you leave notes, you send emails, you close your eyes and think of them, hoping that your vibes and the power of thought reaches them wherever they are. My children & I do these things instinctively, when we’re apart.