Category Archives: Personal Faith

Living with Psoriasis, Personal Faith, Spirituality

Two Questions About Prayer

(Photo by Sagui Andrea on Pexels.com)

Last month I posted a column on Everyday Health titled How the Power of Prayer Helps Me Face My Psoriasis. I shared questions I had as a young adult with psoriasis who recently found the Christian faith:

Is it selfish to pray for yourself when the world has real problems? Is it possible to know if a spiritual practice like prayer can be a healing force in the face of a chronic condition like psoriasis? Am I wasting my energy praying if my health doesn’t improve?

You can read more about my thoughts on these questions in the column. Here I would like to interact with a couple of question that didn’t make it into the Everyday Health blog.

How Much Prayer Is Enough?

“I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.” (Attributed to C.S. Lewis in the movie Shadowlands).

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Nature, Personal Faith

Coping with Anxiety from Storms

The atmospheric river in late January approached as I took a walk at the park.

As I write this, sheets of rain are pouring down on our house. It’s about midnight, and with wind gusts up to 60 mph I doubt I’ll go to bed anytime soon. This storm is one of the strongest I can remember. 

Power surges flicker the lights, but the electricity remains for now. I’m passing these tense moments by writing—something that has brought me comfort over the years when under stress. It helps me break from the paralysis that comes when something traumatic comes. This is definitely one of those times.

The Storm that Exposed a Leaky House

Strong storms that shake the windows do come most every winter here in the Central Valley of California. I grew up in the Bay Area where the storms hit first before moving to the middle part of the state. When I lived in Southern California similar storms would come as well.

One winter, though, exposed every weakness in the townhouse where we lived in Diamond Bar—about 25 miles east of Los Angeles. Between Christmas and New Year’s Day a series of storms dropped half a foot of rain in a matter of days. The house began to leak in no less than seven places—all at once.

I stayed up most of the night monitoring the small window under a downspout on the second level. Heavy rain overloaded the gutter and downspout, which was half clogged with leaves. A sheet of water began to stream onto the window. We learned that night that the installers the previous owner hired did not seal the windows properly. The water passed through the window as if no seal existed at all.

I quickly punched out the window screen then grabbed a cookie sheet to deflect the water away from the house. Once the rain subsided, Lori and mopped up the large pool of water in the house. We then cut a piece of tarp to cover the window—not easy given the height of the window above the ground. I didn’t get much sleep that night.

Another window, in a bedroom above the garage door looking out over the street, also leaked along the inside of the window from the top. That water seeped into the wall, which started to come out of the drywall. I cut out a hole in the wall to get a better view, then devised a way to divert the water coming down a 2×4 in the wall to a bucket below. Water from that storm just about filled that five-gallon bucket.

The roof leaked too—onto the furnace in the garage, from the second story above the kitchen sink down into Lydia’s bedroom on the first floor, and into the attic. Thankfully, the homeowner’s association sent a roofer to inspect and fix those leaks. I never had a problem with the roof again.

The Inept Window Installer

Besides the two leaks from the bedroom window and the side window in the living room, two other windows had minor leaks. I quickly surmised that the installers botched the job when they replaced the original windows in the townhouse a few year’s prior.

The previous owner lived nearby, and told me I could contact him if I ever needed anything. Did I ever need some help after that week of storms and window leaks. He gave me the phone number of the window contractor, a friend from his church. The window contractor replied he could come look at the windows that week.

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Personal Faith

The Lord’s Prayer for the Coronavirus Pandemic

Our Father in Heaven,

Today I come to you humbled and desiring more of You. You are holy, and I am not. Your glory fills the Temple and the universe. I pray Your Kingdom come as the world, and my home, faces a global coronavirus pandemic. 

I feel so small to come before You—to send up my petition for You to intercede with great mercy and healing from east to west, and north to south. As the Lord taught us to pray, may Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

I offer these words to You in Heaven as your servant on earth. My prayers for everyone and everything under the sun feel stifled by the enormity of what has come, and what yet still might. My mind wanders, I confess, to how the numbers of people infected might grow exponentially beyond comprehension. I don’t want to think about how I might be one of those numbers, dear Lord. 

No, I just want more of You in this moment, trusting You for the moments that are to come. I can only handle this moment with You by my side.

I pray for my friends and family, my brothers and sisters, and all those whom Jesus came to love and save. For You loved the world so much You sent your one and only Son. I ask You to protect us and provide for our every need during this unimaginable time. I repent for taking daily bread for granted and know that if I have only a small slice it is gift from above. May manna from Heaven rain down on us as weary travelers in the desert this day.

My God, I long to be with my brothers and sisters, to share Your Word, and a simple meal of thanksgiving, but we are social distancing. I desire to be your under-shepherd amongst them. Yet, You make me lie down in this pasture and I will follow. Show me how much I can do while granting me wisdom to know my limitations.

Forgive me, my Shepherd. When all can be stripped away that which seemed to matter so much really matters not. And I too forgive those trespasses against me that felt so grievous not so long ago, but now seem so small. I drop them off at the foot of the Cross. I don’t want them anymore; thank you for taking those burdens, I don’t want to carry them another step.

Deliver me in my weakness, my Savior—You know how sometimes I fall into a deep hole of anxiety and fear. You see how I imagine not taking another breath into my lungs. I try to depend on myself, or what I think I possess, to survive. But my security is in You. My hope is in You. My needs can only be filled by You. Protect me from the lies that lead my mind to wander to dark places where I cannot see Your eternal light. 

Turn my eyes away from the news that seems so bleak and hopeless. Train my eyes to see how I can be Your servant and love my neighbor, wherever they might be. Indeed, anything I might do is to Your glory and power forever and ever. 

I want more of You today, Father. Less of me, and more of You. Protect us by Your loving and merciful hand; may your mercies be new tomorrow morning as they have been since the beginning of Creation.

Amen

The Lord’s Prayer

Matthew 6:9-13

9 “This, then, is how you should pray:

“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
    on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
    as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation, 
    but deliver us from the evil one.’

14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

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Local News, Personal Faith

Call to Prayer: Northern California Wildfires

The smoke outside the church office built up to alarming levels over just a couple hours. The winds shifted, bringing darkened skies that blocked all but the sun’s outline like an impending storm.

The Northern California wildfires made their presence known in our neighborhood earlier this week as fine ash blanketed the city. I ran to my car, amazed a few minutes later how my asthma flared so quickly.

As of tonight, the fires have taken forty lives and thousands of structures. It does look like progress is being made in containing these fires, but as with the recent hurricanes, the impacts will reverberate for a long time.

Local Wildfire Impact

The winds picked up on Sunday night a week ago. Like last night, they howl through my neighborhood as if through a wind tunnel. The air cools at night, but it is dry. Fire danger warnings remind me this is fire season. The warnings last until at least tomorrow evening even as winds died down this afternoon.

I live about thirty miles from the nearest fires in Northern California. Even though the fires do not threaten my home, we see their impact of health and activity everyday. My son could not run cross country for a few days.One student I talked to didn’t know if he would return to school after a week off due to smoke and fire.

On Thursday, when the air cleared out some, I took him to a local meet in Sacramento. A coach from Lodi mentioned his friends in the wine country who lost a home, and others who evacuated. Tonight I learned that someone at church knew someone who lost a house in Santa Rosa. Everyone knows someone touched by these fires it seems.

From Pain to Prayer

I woke up Monday morning to news of all the fires in the wine country. Fires in the Sierra Nevada foothills and in Southern California also flared. Lori immediately thought of the Tonner Canyone Fire that nearly swept into our neighborhood in 2010. In California it seems we’re never too far from fire’s impact.

Growing up in the Bay Area and going to univeristy near Sacramento at UC Davis, I have a fondness and love for Northern California. My family decided to move back after eight years in Los Angeles partly to return to what I felt like home. It’s painful to see so many of my neighbors impacted by these fires.

As I prepare for Sunday at church tomorrow, I keep coming back to the need to turn this pain I feel to prayer for those impacted by the wildfires. I also want to send out a call to pray.  I think of those who lost their loved ones, homes, businesses, and sense of security. Some eight thousand fire fighters fight on the front lines of the fires, as do many, many others of responders.

Psalm 46 is a psalm I’m praying for Northern California. May God be the refuge and strength of all those who are fearful, anxious, or experiencing loss.

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Psalm 46:1-3

God is our refuge and strength,
    an ever-present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
    and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
3 though its waters roar and foam
    and the mountains quake with their surging.

 

 

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