When I started this blog, I felt so drawn to writing about answered prayers. Entitled “Jesus Reads Our Journals,” my very first scribbled post was the first of a series I wrote on for the first year or two of Addytude. That story read of the ways I had seen J metaphorically open my prayer journal and send his answers directly to me – whether that be through the gift of friends across the hall, the gift of knowledge in college classes, or my overwhelmingly close proximity to my mother and father – a gift.
Yesterday, I sat in my old green chair in the corner of my bedroom and wrote on the last page of the journal I started the year my blog started. Being the sentimental soul I am, later that afternoon I decided to read through almost the entirety of its 192 pages, relishing in my embarrassing and so dramatic bursts of written emotion. And yet again – four years later – I see how J has continued to read my journal and answer my prayers.
Let me just share a few of the most thoughtful answered prayers:
“I’m still waiting on my roommate situation…I talked to Kyla Soden about living together next year and she said she needed to pray about it. Lord! I need her.”
- March 17, 2017 / We were roommates for three years after that entry, and she is one of the very best friends I have ever known.
“Yesterday was Host and Hostess auditions, and oh it made my heart ready for Tiger Tunes! Tiger Tunes is so special to me, and every second I serve as assistant director, I learn that more and more. It is the most joyful weekend in Ouachita town, and the whole time? We’re raising tens of thousands of dollars so our brothers and sisters can stay at Ouachita! Jesus thank you for showing worth in me so I could serve in OSF. I feel at home.”
- February 11, 2018 / I served as assistant director for two years, building relationships and learning leadership before directing my senior year. I have never felt such meaning as I did serving in that way. I had no idea the sentences J would write for me through that job!
“Even my job…I am left defeated because all book publishing jobs are in big, faraway cities, and I am too terrified to go. But who am I to say I know my options? So I ask you to strengthen me against the fear and doubt for my future, because with you there is no reason for that. You have magic planned.”
- July 21, 2018 / While yes…I do not live in NYC and work in book publishing, J took this past summer to redesign the desires of my heart. I’m writing on my back porch of my beautiful little home, only an hour away from my family. That sure feels like magic to me.
“I miss Jack and Nick and Nova…but not only do I want them to come home, I want to go back to high school and start all over. I don’t want Gabe to move in on Monday, because it makes my ‘growing up’ all the more real. And last, I don’t want to start senior year because then it will have to end. The unknown will become known. I have been so blessed these past 21 years…I have an irrational fear that those blessings will run out.”
- July 13, 2019 / My cup is far from empty.
“I went on a date this weekend with a guy named Price Murphree…I feel very excited and warm about him. What do you think?”
- October 20, 2019 / :)
“I also am just struggling to figure out my feelings for life right now. Should I be sad and nostalgic, valuing intentionally every ‘last’ before graduation? Or should I just go on with life as normal, not wasting moments being sad?”
- March 11, 2020 / Two days later, we were sent home – all the more reason to be sad. However, I can’t believe how precious of a blessing that time at home was…I’ll never get time living with my parents like that again. I got to spend weekends with Price, watching the sun set at Lake DeGray (an activity I didn’t realize I enjoyed until this spring, sadly enough) and realizing how much of a gift he is! In some ways, this desperate prayer changed my life.
And finally…my last entry – a prayer almost every twenty-something can write, filling in the blanks of her thank-you’s, yet still so universal of a cry of thanksgiving!
September 23, 2020
My J,
Another journal with you.
Thank you for being patient with me this whole time…your patience allowing me mercy and grace, insight and growth. Thank you for giving me the friends I’ve made in this journal. Thank you for giving me strength to know I deserve better than some of the boys painfully etched in these pages. Thank you for giving me the drive to finish my classes, my honors thesis, my service to OSF, my jobs at KelZek and Ouachita. Thank you for the relationships I’ve strengthened with my family. Thank you for your provision during COVID-19. Thank you for standing sovereign while I was working this summer in places that didn’t feel like home, yet leading me here. Thank you most of all for bringing me Price.
192 pages of some of the most beautiful stories I’ll ever read. Thank you, J.
2 Peter 3:8-9. Your patience sustains me.
Amen
Comments