No, I can't sleep. Yes, I've been up for hours...and tonight is the Adult Spelling Bee onstage at McMurry University! I'll be the one curled up under the chair, napping while the mayor spells a-c-c-o-u-c-h-e-m-e-n-t, a "confinement or lying-in related to childbirth." (Mike called last night to be sure I knew this one since it was used in the finals of the Scripps National Bee a few years ago. Pretty thoughtful!)
When we called to register our Madison team, the Bee People said there's no handbook or word list to study; teams of three from all over Abilene just get up on stage and wing it. (I've brushed up on "connoisseur" and "daguerreotype," anyway.)
Being up before the rest of the world is kind of fun, though. The house is still and quiet, except for May Bee, who is snoring LIKE A LUMBERJACK. (When the reading lamp beside the bed came on, she came over for a cuddle, but afterwards, I made her get back on her pillow in the corner of the bedroom...the sleepy world just isn't ready for her braying bark at three in the morning.)
And it's a good time to read, too! Snuggly under the covers with the world fast asleep...delicious, in fact, if the alarm clock and WORK and the thought of being onstage tonight weren't looming large. Oh, well...here's the Thomas Merton prayer I read and loved this morning:
"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone."
--Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude
How comforting! It's okay to have no clue about which house to buy or how you're going to afford it on a public school teacher's salary. We serve a Creator who loves us more than we love ourselves...One who will never, ever leave us. Everybody has money worries--for lucky Americans, it's usually about mortgages, car payments, and college tuition.
For most people in this world, it's how to feed a family or pay for a funeral or how to get a child medical care. Kind of puts my worrying into perspective...and almost makes me want to get back in bed.
Almost.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
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2 comments:
Wow!!! I love this prayer! LOVE it! Thanks so much for sharing it. Praying for your sweet dreams!
Thomas Merton has put my feelings into words! The simplicity of that prayer is like that of a child speaking to a parent. That must be why Jesus taught us to regard God as our Father and then said, "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened."
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