Childhood belief about prayer

As I was driving to a doctor appointment this morning, I was praying a bit. I realized when I arrived at the doctor's office that I had been distracted at some point and hadn't "finished" the prayer. That is, I hadn't closed it with an "In Jesus' name, amen." It brought back memories of how I prayed as a kid.

The way I prayed (and I don't remember if I was taught this or just picked it up from seeing my parents pray or something) was to start it with "Dear Jesus" and to finish with either "Dear Jesus, amen," or "In Jesus' name, amen." I remember "Dear Jesus, amen," as the more frequently used closing until I got older. I also remember believing that if you didn't end the prayer properly, the prayer wasn't over, and anything you said until you actually closed the prayer would count as you talking to God. So, if I said, "Dear Jesus, thank you for my parents, please may I have the He-Man Power Castle ... *distraction* ... stop it, Josh! You're such a booger-face! ... *remembers prayer* .. Oh no! Uh, dear Jesus, amen," then that would all count as my prayer to God. To put it in nerdy terms, it was like forgetting to close an HTML tag or use the proper bracketing in a mathematical equation. Everything between those open tags or brackets would count towards that initial designation (with potentially catastrophic results!). I was afraid that any "sinful" words uttered before properly closing the prayer would be as though I were saying them to God Himself!

This morning as I remembered that I had trailed off in my prayer, I realized I still sort of believe that. If I really think about it, or if you were to ask me, I would say that I don't actually believe that, but I still finish a prayer if I remember later that I hadn't.

BONUS MEMORY!

For a while as a young boy I also used to ask Jesus into my heart in every prayer. I remember praying for lunch with some friends and asking Jesus into my heart for the hundredth time. I'm not sure exactly why I did that. I remember also (at odd times later in childhood) fearing that I had never said it properly and that I was still unsaved, so I would pray it again on the spot "just to be sure."

Awkward conversation

(Please pardon my use of "awkward"; I know it's been the new "random" for while now, in terms of overuse in everyday conversation.)

(Also, please forgive my use of the "it's the new ______" phrase; I know that's on the outs too.)

(If I misuse semi-colons, please let me know. I stopped using them for a while because I seemed to use them way more than anyone else, so I assumed I was wrong.)

So yesterday Amy and I were just exiting our car for lunch at our apartment. We ran into a neighbor friend. We don't know him very well, but he's a nice guy with a family and I believe he's a missionary. We were both heading to our apartments, so we walked together for a few feet until we reached our respective stairs.

"Boy, this weather, huh?" he starts with. I agree with him, smiling. (The day before had been cold and drizzly; this day was warm and sunny.) Normal, friendly, meaningless conversation. The comfortable kind you have with someone you don't know very well, or even a stranger.

He continues: "And then there are the thousands dead in China and Myanmar." His eyes grow sad. Oh no, this conversation just got downgraded to Uncomfortable.

"Yeah," I agree, wiping the smile quickly from my face.

"The End Times, you know."

"Could be." This space of 15 feet is not conducive to arguments about End Times theology, so I'm just going to agree with whatever he says.

"You know, the Bible says that in the end of days the earth will experience pain like birth pangs."

"Right." Please, just a few more feet until we part, walk faster! But I can't, it'll look like I'm trying to escape.

He pauses a bit, looking reflective. Stop it! What do you want me to say? I don't know what to say to this! It's horribly tragic stuff, to be sure, but why are we discussing it on the way to our apartments from the curb? Augh!

The "conversation" actually continues up the stairs! How to break it off? There's no easy or natural way to do it! Just have to say something vaguely friendly but hollow.

"Welp, have a good one," I say as I wave and smile meekly.

And I'm finally free.

Memory: Mis-reading On Purpose

My memory is an odd thing. Some memories from childhood are clear as a bell to this day, some memories from only a few years ago are absolutely gone. My brothers are often baffled that I remember what I was thinking when I did certain things as a kid. My mom has encouraged me to start writing down certain memories, probably mostly for my family's entertainment. Here's one from when I was in elementary school.

I was a big Calvin & Hobbes fan from an early age. I developed an extensive vocabulary at an early age because of this, though I mis-used words all the time. Also, most of the words didn't lend themselves to my normal everyday topics of conversation, so I would try and recreate the exact context of the strip with someone else so I could use a word like "revoked" and sound smart.

But this story isn't about my vocabulary weirdness, it's about Calvin's green-leaning. Watterson has always included very pro-green messages about pollution and animals and such. This message of recycling, saving water and saving the rainforests was also reinforced by my public elementary school from about 3rd grade on, as I recall. I'm not sure what made me adopt my own conservation mindset, but at that age, the idea that there were bad guys cutting down forests and jerks throwing their trash everywhere, and that we needed to stop them was an easy sell. When I first discovered all the cool animals that lived in South American rainforests, the deal may have been sealed. I loved poison dart frogs and ocelots, so Go Earth! Down with loggers! Down with pollution!

This leads us to some prayer night my folks were having out our house one time. There were a couple other families with us there. There was only one other kid that I remember, a girl about my age, but I didn't know her very well. We all wrote down prayer requests and then passed them to the person next to us, then we went around praying for each one. My request was something about saving the earth. I even included a line from Calvin: "We've only got one Earth, and it's got to last us a while." Well, the lady next to me who had to read my request couldn't read my writing, apparently, because she struggled through it and translated it as "'We've only got one Earth, and it's got to lost us a while.' Well, Lord, you know what he means..." I was really annoyed. My handwriting isn't messy! You really couldn't read "last"? Come on!

So then it was my turn. I held the note of requests that belonged to the girl who was my age. Her handwriting wasn't that great, but it was her spelling that was really awful. We must have been in at least 3rd or 4th grade at that point, and I was (am) quite the spelling snob, so I was even more disgusted by her lack of skill. The trouble was, I could understand her message completely! I deciphered it quite easily. I thought, how can you not read my message, with its perfect spelling, grammar, and punctuation, yet I can decipher this affront to the English language with ease? It didn't seem fair that, in front of the group, I was going to look like the dunce who couldn't spell, whereas this girl was going to look normal. So I did a really jerky thing. I acted like I had to struggle through reading her note for the prayer. I still read it completely and understandably, and didn't add, "Well, Lord, You know what she means...", but I really poured on the pauses and effort in my voice.

Kind of a butt-face.