My Dirty Little Secret:

I started saying random prayers of thankfulness in my late 20s early 30s.. Always when I was alone, often while I was driving. Prayers of thanks for a beautiful sunset or sunrise, for the beauty of a fresh snow-covered landscape. I felt blessed to be granted such visual treats. Sometimes my thanks would extend to my health, family, friends, or financial comfort. But usually they were realted to God's creation around me: The beauty of nature.

I was certain that my family, my spouse's family, and definately my spouse would not approve of this behavior or the sentiment. It would be considered weak and flaky. Never-the-less, I was drawn to express my gratitude through prayer.

When I took it a little further in my head, I wasn't quite sure who or what I was "thanking". However, I felt confident that this would become clear to me in time -that I just had to wait.

............all things considered, the above statement of faith and patience was extremely uncharacteristic of me at the time as I was an opinionated black-and-white Science graduate who held strongly to a belief in the superiority of the scientific method of investigation: Hypothesize, test it, make conclusions, revise hypothesis if necessary and test again until the testing outcomes confirm the hypothesis............"wait and see what might unfold" was just not part of who I was at the time.

But I did. That is, I waited patiently on God.

Years went by, and God was patient with me too. He was there, very quietly placing people and situations before me as a backdrop through which to ponder the existence and greatness of Him.

For example: In my work, 2 teenagers chose me as their counsellor and confidante. The first was a bulimic whose mother said that after years of struggling to find help for her daughter and with worry for her daughter, she concluded that she had to simply let go and leave Adriana at the foot of the cross for Jesus to care for her. She told me that it was hard to let go, as a loving mother, but that all of her plans, and programs thus far had achieved nothing but Adriana's increasingly worsening health. This mom explained that she would continue to love her daughter deeply and support her unconditionally but that she would no longer be the rehabilitator, no longer be the therapy "mover-and-shaker" - She would leave Adriana solely in God's hands.

Wow.

I thought a lot about that - the idea of leaving Adriana at "the foot of the cross".

I turned it over and over in my mind. Forever trying to find a fit for it. Where do I put this idea?, I thought. Some days I would try on my old pessimistic/religion-ridiculing hat and declare outloud to my spouse (or quietly, in my heart) that the "cross" idea was a flaky cop-out. I decided that the decision to leave a child at the foot of the cross was a way of using religion as an excuse to give up on one's responsibilities as a parent.

...........then, I would consider the idea of the cross once again. I noticed that time after time, in my dealings with Adriana as her counsellor, whenever I visulized placing her at the foot of the cross, a peace settled upon me. Strange eh? It didn't fit anywhere for me, that peace.

So I left it, for awhile.