Saturday, September 20, 2008

Things aren't always what they seem

So a few months ago I came across a website that gave me a great idea about prayer. The site, which seems to have a Law of Attraction feel to it, talked about something they called "The Why Game". You are encouraged to play the game with another person, but I found that it was equally effective if you are by yourself.

The purpose of The Why Game is to give you insight into why you want what you want. Essentially it works like this (my paraphrase): You identify what it is that you want, you identify what that want looks like in real life, and then you identify what experience you desire from what you want. Once you complete that cycle, you begin the exercise again, theoretically with more insight into what you want, and go through the process as many times as needed until you get to the heart of what it is you are really seeking.

It sounded interesting, so I decided to give it a go.

It had been over a year since Ian was born, and we were still having a difficult time with insurance paying for his hospital stay. It was stressing me out big time. My plan was to go through the game for this situation, and when I got down to the nitty gritty of what I wanted, I would make that the focus of my prayer.

My first couple of cycles of The Why Game looked like this (click to enlarge):


After a few more rounds of my little experiment, I found that my fundamental desire was to have a strong and healthy family unit, so I decided to change my prayers. Instead of praying for the insurance company to do right by me, as I saw it, my prayers were focused on developing strong bonds between Dan, Ian and myself.

An interesting thing began to happen when I decided to focus on what I truly wanted and allowed God to handle how it came to be. Slowly but surely we started getting insurance statements showing they covered Ian's medical bills.

Now you can take from this little experiment what you want, but one of the interesting things I learned, is that in many cases, the thing that I am completely fixated upon when I pray, is not what I truly desire.

Go figure.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Did you miss me?

So for the past two months I have been completely buried at work. I'm talking late nights until 9pm, working weekends, 12 hour days, etc. It was rough. Anyway, we ended up hitting our deadline, and now I'm free! Since I haven't been posting all that much (yes, I know you all miss my 5 posts per month) I figured I would give a summary of a few things that I've been thinking about over the past couple of months.
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I've decided that Costco is a gift from God. I hate shopping, especially grocery shopping. You go to the store, pick up all the stuff you need, use it all up and what's your prize? You get to do it all again the following week. Not fun. But then, God saw fit to give us Costco. Now, instead of silently cursing because you forgot to pick up pasta for the spaghetti you planned to make for dinner *SURPRISE* Not only do you have pasta for tonight, you have 12 additional packages sitting in your pantry for whenever you need it. If this doesn't convince people that God exists, I don't know what will.


I'm sick of videos on news websites. Are people not allowed to read anymore? There's nothing more irritating than seeing an interesting headline, clicking the link to read the article, only to have Windows Media Player launch and then display
....buffering....
Then you have to sit through some ridiculously loud 15 second advertisement before you even get to the report. I'd rather read plain text any day.


I'm finding it increasingly difficult to toe the party line when it comes to Christianity. I'm a seeker; always have been, and I assume I always will be. I ask weird questions, and often come to unconventional conclusions. That's who I am and I accept that, but I find myself getting frustrated that I'm expected to conform to what "traditional Christianity" teaches. What happens if I just don't agree?


Hurricanes suck. 'Nuff said


Snopes exists for a reason. Use it BEFORE you forward me a message telling me Bill Gates wants to give me a million dollars. Actually, he doesn't want to give me a million dollars. Trust me.
On a similar note, don't forward me a feel good message that at the end says "send this to 575 people, including the person who sent it to you." Umm, no. I'm not going to do it. It's very rare that I ever forward those messages on to anyone, but I'm definitely not going to send it back to whomever sent it to me. Why would I do that? If you decide you want to read the message again, why not just go back to your inbox and re-read it?


If I hear one more person question Sarah Palin's ability to be Vice-President and raise a family, I'm going to scream. You do realize she's not a single parent, right? Why doesn't anyone ask how Barack Obama plans to raise his two young children if he were to become President?


I was saddened when Bernie Mac died. Two things I really enjoy in life are good music, and lots of laughter, and Bernie Mac had a gift for making me laugh until I cried.
"When a kid gets one-years-old, I believe you got the right to hit him in either the throat or the stomach. If you grown enough to talk back, you grown enough to get ****** up!"

Bernie Mac, The Original Kings of Comedy(2000)
Sure, it's a bit crude, but it's also hilarious.