When it Rains, it Pours/Learning to Pray: Part Two

So in addition to learning that my prayers don't have to be fancy, another thing I'm learning from my book is that it's ok to ask for stuff. The author of my prayer book tells lots of stories about his children and how as a parent he enjoys giving to them. If I, as an earthly father, delight in giving to my children, he muses, how much more does their Heavenly Father enjoy it? He goes on to write about how prayer leads to hope in our lives. And how this is a good thing.

When I pray, there are two things that I don't usually ask for. First, I usually don't ask for help with things I think I can do on my own. Second, I usually don't ask for things I really want because if I ask for it, I'm admitting how much I want it, then I'll start hoping for it, and then I'll be really sad if I don't get it.

One good example of this is getting married. I stopped praying for that. It's easier for me to make my list of reasons why I like being single and convince myself that I'm happy and that this is what's best for me. That I don't want it. And if I don't let myself want it, I'm not disappointed when I don't get it.

But, since I read in my book that asking for stuff is good, I decided to give it a try. Last week, my students had their state standardized testing, which means for two hours every morning I could do nothing but walk up and down aisles monitoring them. This gave me a lot of time to pray. So, one morning, I just thought, "Well, I'm just going to try this asking thing....it's worth a shot." So, I spent some time walking up and down aisles watching students test and talking with God about my desire to not be single anymore.

Now, let me just preface the rest of this by saying I was not expecting to ask for a boyfriend and then get home to find one sitting on my front porch. I am totally aware that that's not how this works. I was just expecting to be honest with God about how I felt and come away feeling better...or at least more at peace. It felt nice. And like Paul E. Miller writes, it felt hopeful.

What I was not expecting was for two people to ask me later that day about my roommate's boyfriend, which I didn't know she had (because it was a very recent development and I don't have facebook, not because my roommate and I have some strange relationship where we live together but never talk....I mean, I knew she was kind of talking to someone, but I didn't know they had made it official). Seriously, I thought, I finally own up to the fact that I would like a boyfriend, and my only single girl friend who lives near me gets one. (Then, for a brief moment, I thought that perhaps prayer was like detecting the use of magic in Harry Potter. The ministry can tell whenever anyone in a house uses magic, but they can't tell who actually used it. This is why Harry gets in trouble when Dobby does magic at the Dursley's. So maybe, there was just an alert that somebody at my house had asked for a boyfriend, but the request wasn't labeled, so since there were two single girls at my house, my roommate got one instead. Then I remembered that God knows everything, and He knew it was me. Plus, I was praying in my classroom anyway.)

To get to the point, I had finally allowed myself to have a little spark of hope, and then it felt like something came along and snuffed it right out. So, I've been feeling pretty low for about a week.

Add that to the end of the school year, which means kids are crazy, and you get the not-so-good-place where I currently am.

Then, yesterday, I planned a fun lesson for my last class to do--I actually got help from our drama teacher and planned some improv games for them to do in response to the book we just finished reading. I was excited because I thought they would be excited and want to do the lesson. But they didn't, which just made me feel worse.

Then, this morning, when I got in my car to come to school, it wouldn't start. Seriously.

So now, all I want to do is crawl in my bed, go to sleep, and pretend that the world has gone away because I'm rather tired of it right now.

I do feel like I need to say a few good things so no one thinks I'm horribly depressed and so my mom doesn't worry about me. Other than my last class, I had a great day at school yesterday. My other classes just finished reading The Giver, which is one of my favorite books. Lois Lowry won the Newberry Award for it, so yesterday in class we read and discussed her acceptance speech. I absolutely love it, and there is a part at the end that reminds me of why I wanted to become a teacher. My students liked it too, and we had fabulous discussion on it, which reminded me of why I love being a teacher. I baby-sat my brother last night, and we played board games, which was really fun, and after he went to bed I got to play the piano at my mom's for an hour, which always makes me feel better. And, last night the Celtics won game 2 and the Red Sox beat the Yankees. See, not everything is horrible.