When to pray

I am looking at my life as a progressive and digressing set of good and bad decisions.  

Every moment I make choices: I decide to shower or wear a hat, to have cereal or a green smoothie, to get up early or sleep in til the very last minute, to take the trash out or keep adding to it, to check my email and Instagram or take a moment to talk to God in prayer, to call a friend or text them or not contact them all, and so on.  

Some decisions are very black and white in terms of good or bad, but most decisions look less defined, however at the root of every decision there is an end.  In other words all of our decisions (call a friend or not, take a walk or watch glee) will eventually lead to the path we expect them to even if we hoped they wouldn't.  I mean it makes sense.  Our choices lead us to our chosen destinations.  This fact was overwhelming to me at first, so an easier and practical way I have found  to implement good decisions is to look at what I do right now as a good or bad decision.  I may not always be clear between the two (like if I should blow dry my hair or air dry it), or worse, I may see a bad decision and take it, but with prayer and a renewed desire to make good decisions that will lead to my desires destination rather than destruction, I am going to look at right now as a good decision or a bad decision.  

I don't know if it's my hormones and emotions, those tricky devils, but even after all that I have experienced in Nashville, Cambodia, Russia, and home, I still catch myself doubting God.  I see the same idiocy in me as I did in the Israelites in the Old Testament.  I catch myself thinking: "is God really there, or am I banking my hopes on something that doesn't even exist, just going along to find solace in my never ending searching soul?"  Then the question begs, "why is my soul always searching?". Even the term "searching" could be an emotional state.  Emotions are fickle, I know that I cannot fully trust my emotions because when I do they get me into trouble most of the time, but emotions are good too.  They help move me to do good things sometimes.  So I suppose it would be good ask: "are these tears going to help me make a good decision or a bad one?" And then to expose the emotions for what they are, feelings that change and recur all the time depending on what I see, eat, smell, hear, and touch.  But I am not my emotions, because if I were I would be completely unstable.  I have to find the Rock that I stand on no matter what happens and cling to it.  My Rock is God even when my emotions feel like He is not there.  Although those are the most scary moments, to be tossed in a storm of theology and faith, doubting the very thing that I cling to in order to keep from flying away.  Thoughts like "perhaps if I let go of the Rock there will be something else more better or more stable that I will find?", but I have let go before, many times in fact, but memory tries to betray me and trick me into thinking I haven't.  My own mind can be against my love for God when it makes me forget that I have crawled back to the Rock so many times, I crawled back in Nashville, in Cambodia, at home, and pretty much everyday.  I have yet to find a more real and more consistent, a more grace giving, unconditionally loving and adventure taking Rock like my God.  

Even so, I still weakly ask that God would show me more of Himself, that God would help me not focus on the waves or the impossibility of my feet on top of the waters as I look to Him through a storm.  

The struggles and frustrations of believing in an invisible God are what drive my faith into trusting God more.  

I could be wrong, I could be all wrong about God and about life, but I'm not letting go of the only thing in my life that I have found to be fulfilling and meaningful, despite it's struggles and frustrations.  So far nothing else compares...so if I find a comparable love, a comparable joy, a comparable grace, then I'll switch over, but if not I'll not stop getting to know God. 

God is not far away, nor is He just "up there" doing His god thing.  God is relational and loves talking to us.  I know He speaks to me because when I stop worrying or comparing my life to pictures on Instagram or biographies I read, when I stop all of that and just hold still, then I hear the the whisper like wind coo to me that all is ok.  Because none of this even fulfills me, no amount of gain has ever satiated my selfish ambition and appetite.  So it's in logic and truth that my God speaks to me, and I just need to listen.  

Especially in the chaos of my thoughts, I need to hear Him.

And so I pray.