This Monday morning the kids were back to summer camp.  This meant that I had to spend more time getting them ready in the morning.

Then my wife needed me to help her get her car to the shop.

I had several distractions that interrupted me from doing my math or much of my network studies.  After cleaning up the house and going through the laundry my wedding ring was still missing.  I worried because on Sunday while cleaning in the garage I heard some things drop in the trash and I was only able to retrieve one which was a screw.  The garbage went out this morning and I wished I would have searched it.  I prayed for my ring and my marriage.

I had my psych class in the evening so I had to prepare for that.   We discussed some great material about child development which was very beneficial to me.  Every parent should take this class.

Afterward I got to go to a meeting.   A guy brought a topic about the value of prayer.   I thought of how I could not see the value of prayer based on my old idea of prayer as needless flattery directed towards God who does not need this.  This, as it often did back then, led me to doubt the effectiveness of the 12 steps.  My thoughts drifted, as they often did back then, to how I could make my own sobriety program.  I thought of how I could affect a psychic change by making a deliberate effort at the beginning of every day to direct my thinking towards a productive set of behaviors and then strive all day to redirect my thinking every time it went down the old paths.  My first thought was that it wouldn't work because it was willpower based.   My second thought was "what if you invited God in to help?"  Then it dawned on me.   Perhaps this was a type of prayer, a type that would have a practical and effective application.

Things got better from there on.

After the meeting I got into a discussion with a couple of friends about an enlarged spiritual life through Jesus Christ.  One guy was newer than I thought and I worried that our discussion might have disturbed his faith. But, I realized that it was a chance that had to be taken and that he invited the discussion and God probably arranged the circumstances of the guy locking his keys in the car for that reason.

Thanks be to God