praying, prayer life and an answer to prayer

last night when i was at rcia and we were discussing suffering, i recounted in part my dreadful mri experience. i told them i thought of different people i knew and how they had seemed to take suffering in stride with a great deal of grace and how i seemd to crumble, literally, right in the middle of it all.

brave little soldier am i, praying for my suffering to somehow be redemptive in one breath, freaking out and totally panic-stricken the next...thinking of what Jesus endured on the Cross for me, that which He experienced was in ways to profound for me to wrap my mind around.

i then told my class how i was praying aloud amid the clamor of the magnets buffeting the interior of the machine that i had my head leaned against, and that i offered my suffering as a prayer of sorts, feeble as it truly seemed in retrospect, for my son max, in an effort to help ease whatever suffering he might endure after his surgery...and in the next breath, again be panic-stricken and paralyzed, unable to even breathe properly. i even had trouble talking about it without getting short of breath.

at that precise moment, i heard a question whispered into my heart: how'd max do today? did he suffer much?

i paused and gave it some thought - gee, i only gave him advil just before dinner because he was *uncomfortable* - come to think of it, he didn't complain, not one time!

::well, now.::

we can increase our prayer lives by offering each act, each moment of our lives, no matter how seemingly insignificant, as a prayer to God. every breath we take, every move we make, we offer up to You...

we are so critical of our prayer lives, yours truly included, that we forget every time we turn our hearts and faces up to God, every time we elevate our minds, direct them to the Creator -- every. single. time. -- matters!

no matter how incomplete, insignificant. no matter how raw or jaded, emotional/unemotional, imperfect, speechless. He meets us there, every time. Jesus promised He'd be with us always, until the end of time - He is not a liar, He is truth.

even in the middle of an MRI machine (which is totally hell on earth for some of us), He is so right there.

in the midst of it all.