To: G-D

I know I haven't really prayed to you in a long time. So long in fact that I had trouble deciding how to address my prayer. I didn't know if I should say G-D, or LORD, Jehovah or YHWH, I thought about saying...Heavenly Father or Jesus. I decided that you would probably hear me regardless.

If you are still inclined to want to walk with me and teach me and let me share your yoke (Matt. 11:28-30), I am ready to walk and learn and share.

I doubt that you are as skeptical as I am. In fact, they told me that you have cast my indiscretions into the Sea of Forgetfulness. But I want to be honest and say, I don't know how many more times I will have the strength to crawl back to you. So perhaps, you can teach me in a way that will ensure I stay close by forever.

I was looking at my life today and I realized something that is hard to deal with: Everything that I depended on has been taken away, everything except my mother...and you. My best friend and I are both equally convinced that our destinies are tied up in our home states - Kansas for her, Oklahoma for me. We will always be long distance. In one year, I have buried three automobiles and my ability to move about freely. I have lost my independence. I have lost the ability to get and keep money. I have lost my innocence. I'm surprised my clothes and shoes haven't been lost in a fire or something. That's the last piece of me I have left to hide behind.

The Buddhists say, "The only sacrifice is to give up that which has no reality."

It is time for a change. If I thought you were impressed by sacrifice I would put on sackcloth and shave my head to show you that I'm sorry. But I know that what you really want is my acknowledgment, my submission. You want me to want you.

And for the first time, I think I am able to admit that you are all I have ever really wanted. "As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you..." (Psalm 42:1). Everything that I have been searching for is tangled up in you. Everything that I want you can give.

So I come to you asking that you steer my heart away from anger. Help me see things from the space of my heart and not my head. Help me to use the debris of my old life as building blocks for the new one, not as a stumbling blocks on my path. I ask that you steer my mind away from competitiveness. Help me to strive to accomplish the things you have ordained for me, because they are good and right, and not in order to outdo someone else. I want to be so wrapped up in you that people look at me and see only you. I want to live up to my name: "Successful Servant of G-D." Help me to lay up my treasures in heaven...because where my treasure is, there my heart will be also (Matt. 6:19-21).

I don't want the rocks to sing in my place. Turn me into something that shows the world your glory.

So let it be.