Do-overs

I recently traveled to Pendleton, Oregon via Portland to attend a wedding with my manfriend, Dale. Driving along the Columbia River, I requested to stop at Multnomah Falls, a place that I hiked often with my little family when we lived in Portland almost 18 years ago. I was totally unprepared for the flood of emotions I felt as we stood at the base of the falls.

The next morning in our hotel, after engaging in a ruckus round of early morning texts with my siblings- not an unusual exchange and something my son, Patrick, refers to as a Lebanese alarm clock- my brother, Johnnie, who lives in Pullman, Washington, singled me out in communication.

“Did you drive or fly in?” he inquired.

I responded: “We flew into Portland. Made me sad. Good memories.”

” Yes.. I bet.” He replied.

Me: “Don’t you wish you could have some do-overs in life?”

Answered Prayer

I'm sorta kinda glad that God doesn't work like a gum ball machine. Prayer in, answer out. Automatic and immediate. Feeding the Silicon Valley habit of getting things instantaneously. Google this. Twitter that. Instagram it! Now you see it, now you don't on Snapchat.

I assume that God is more tech savvy than we are. Yet counterculture in the most innovative manner. God absolutely answers our prayers but not before we have wiggled and squirmed and hit road blocks and narrow openings of escape and experienced anxiety and fear and dread and hope and love and amazement.

Life giving clues come out of nowhere in places we are not looking. Yet the door we stare at remains closed.