The 4 P's

Prayer, patience, peace and pessimism

I love my family and friends. Always there when you need them most. Never judging. Always listening. Supporting. Toughening me up (brother-in-law). Telling me things like, “the next person you date you better tell them to ‘take a seat, because we got some SH** to talk about’” haha. I love these people.

This weekend was interesting, to say the least. However, aside from all the not so great and “ah CRAP!” moments there are a few good things that came about…. I am going to Hawaii (hopefully), have leftovers for lunch and dinner for a while, have some cupcakes to enjoy, and have my outlook for life set on optimistic.

Prayer, patience, peace and pessimism – all things I really suck at. But this sums it up:

So basically God wants us to be patient, pray, and He will provide the peace. Maybe the pessimism part doesn’t necessarily apply but – I’ll get there.

Prayer – I don’t want to do it. I don’t have “time”. My way of prayer is, “ah CRAP! I messed up again. Teach me another lesson, God.” Or “ah CRAP! Lord, can you bail me out once more???” or “ah CRAP! Another door shut – where’s the next one?” It’s always been an area of disappointment to me. I never feel like my prayers are heard or understood or effective. I never know what to say or ask for and I sure as heck don’t know how to come up with all the flowery lingo that others can. However, I am finding out that with each “ah CRAP!” moment, prayer before action is so incredibly important. The hard part is, when it involves someone else, God’s voice might become muffled or mistaken. Or, I might have heard perfectly clear but got thrown off track by someone else’s accord. Either way – prayer is important. Being thankful for all the moments outside the “ah CRAP!” moments are also muy importante.

Patience – another thing most of us suck at. Patience for others, for ourselves, for our pets – a lot of the time patience is nonexistent. We are an instant gratification type people. But I want to be better. I pray for patience. Does that count? I’m not so sure it works. I try. I try not to yell at my dogs or stress about being on time or making sure plans go through – by having patience with the puppies and the people in the world. It’s a character flaw maybe but at least I can admit it! Patience is really hard – even when dealing with those I love most. It comes with the type A personality thing. Lucky me! I’m doomed but I choose to see the bright side. At least having an abundance of patience is something I can work at and not just settle for having less of.

Peace – being at ease. I think this goes hand in hand with patience. Knowing that no matter what happens I am going to be provided for, that’s peace – and a dollop of optimism. To me, peace is knowing that after making a prayerful decision, that it’s the right one. Having confidence in hearing the word of God clearly. There have been 1 million or more times I’ve made a decision where I didn’t have peace about the outcome…and did it anyway – some were decisions made on a whim, some were decisions I didn’t pray about, some were decisions I made simply because it was what I wanted to do - like living with someone for a time (look how that ended!), like moving to Dallas (look how that ended!), like starting arguments with people for the sake of arguing, or something relatively insignificant like not wearing my seatbelt or texting and driving.

Prayerful decision making = peace

What a concept!!!

What a sigh of relief!

Prayerful decision making = peace

If only there was an “all other things being equal” type economic formulae to go with it…but there’s not. So it can become a bit convoluted. Again with the type A personality thing…darn it! We can’t keep things simple, unfortunately.

And now this remains – pessimism. When asking google to define the term, google returns the following: “Pessimism – a tendency to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen; a lack of hope or confidence in the future.” I said earlier that I suck at prayer, patience, peace and pessimism. Being slightly on the side of hypochondriac does not warrant the label, “pessimist”. I don’t have a choice but to be optimistic. I don’t think you should give yourself a choice. If I constantly thought the world was all doom and gloom and ALL my mistakes were sending me straight to 1. Hell, 2. The poor house, and 3. Jail – I would be a miserable little person. Pessimism gets into your pores and turns you cold. My good friend CW made an awesome point tonight, “if you think you can’t or think you can, you’re right.” Meaning, if you’re constantly EXPECTING the worst thing to happen – it’s going to. However, if you expect the best – you will generally receive better results. The choice is yours – (I think someone said this after morning announcements all throughout grade school!)

I don’t really know what my point is except maybe this – make prayerful decisions by waiting patiently for an answer, be optimistic about the potential results, and God will give you peace in your heart like you’ve never known before.