Have you ever spoken only to realize that you sound just like your mother? Or maybe your father? Brian has confirmed that I take after my mother on several occasions. “All right, Donna,” he’ll chuckle at me. I’ve especially adopted an exact phrase from Momma that got impressed on me throughout my childhood. Let’s see if you can guess what it is.
Me, “People are saying that I should go to college. I don’t know if I should; or if I did, could we afford it?”
Her, “Did you pray about it?”
Me, “Should I take French or Spanish?”
Her, “Did you pray about it?”
Me, “Have you seen my red shoes? I can’t find them.”
Her, “Did you pray about it?”
I think I could ask her if it’s possible for me to swim to Antarctica and she’d question whether or not I’ve prayed about it. While there were times that I believed she was just getting me out of her hair, her intentions were for me to get in the habit of approaching my heavenly Father for day to day decisions, to cultivate an intimate and trusting relationship with Him. (This might seem far out to you, but I didn’t have a very invested or available earthly father growing up.) She wanted me to be sure that the God who created me loved me very much and that nothing was too big or too small to set before Him. And I didn’t have much of a problem going to Him for the big stuff. It was the little stuff that I always wanted to fix myself.
For instance, my senior year of high school I took a job at a little restaurant called Pizza Oven. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I burned myself there EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. One day it was the grill. The next it was the oven. Then it was hot grease. Then it was hot plates. Sometimes the burns were severe and often they were minor. But they were always assured to happen one way or another. This infuriated me. Did I pray about it? Of course not. Why pray about something when clearly you just need to me more careful? Or so I thought. No matter how careful I was, I simply could not avoid certain burning.
So finally, at my wits end, having lost all hope in my own control over the matter, I prayed. I begged that God would help me to be as careful as I needed to be. I begged that He’d keep me from burning myself. And, like any frazzled person who’s desperate, I bargained and negotiated (not that I necessarily needed to), “I promise that if You keep me from burning myself, I will talk about You every day.”
Do you know that I never burned myself again?
Sometimes I wasn’t even careful. Sometimes my arm would still bump the oven or hot grease would crackle, pop and land on my skin. Didn’t matter. The oven didn’t burn me and the grease rolled right off. I kicked myself for not having thought to pray sooner! I could have avoided a lot of trips to the first aid box! And yes, I did keep up my end of the bargain, too… Quite gratefully, in fact.
Yesterday marked the ELEVENTH day that I was without my car keys. I was using a spare; but the spare didn’t also have my gym pass and salon key on it. I heard my mom’s voice in my head, “Did you pray about it?” So I prayed.
I found the keys exactly 30 seconds later.
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