Lessons from my Mum

Define: Intentional

Intended or planned; done deliberately or voluntarily; done with intent.

-I thought definitions weren't supposed to have the word or root word in them, that's what mum always said...

Define: Intent

Purpose: an anticipated outcome that is intended or that guides your planned actions.

-Again with the cyclical definitions, I always got in trouble for this in English...

Define: Purpose

Intentional

-REALLY? That's dumb....try again

Define: Purpose

A result, end, aim, or goal of an action intentionally undertaken

-I swear, these people clearly did not take English class from my mum, she would have failed them.

Hopefully though, it kind of makes sense. Here's where I am going with this: I am a spontaneous person. For fear of finding a definition of spontaneous such as, "not intentional" I'll just leave that one out. As a dancer, a modern dancer, an improv dancer, I do a lot of things spontaneously. Life is more fun when things aren't super planned, when you can let things flow the way they want to, when you let your body move the way it feels like it. Sometimes creative things come out of "the moment" that are so much cooler than anything you could have spent hours coming up with.

Intention is like THE word that I hear all the time. Particularly when I am in the vicinity of Campus House, which to be honest, is quite frequently. Campus House's like number one goal, I'm pretty sure, behind loving Jesus and all that stuff, is to be intentional. About EVERYTHING. Now, I'm not complaining, I think it is absolutely awesome and absolutely incredible. It's just, I'm a very spontaneous, not planned person.

I have realized however, that I have started to become like that in my prayer life. Praying, for whatever reason, has always been a not very easy thing for me to be consistent on. It might be because when I was growing up we always prayed before dinner and before bed and every time we stood up in church it seemed like. And the prayers were always the same sounding and not very meaningful. So I started to find prayer really boring. It just wasn't exciting or appealing. By now I have a better understanding of what prayer is and I get that it's just a conversation with God. I can have really awesome prayers or be really great about praying over people or letting the Holy Spirit speak through me, but that's not on like a day to day basis.

I've been thinking about this a lot, and wondering.

Dan is the love of my life. I talk to him EVERY day. I tell him the dumbest most insignificant things, and when my day sucks and I just want a hug and a shoulder to cry on, I call him and let him know. It's not hard at all to say something to Dan at any point in any day.

Why can't I be like that with God? I can give all the right answers here.

Like, I should be so in love with God that it's all I want to do and I can't help but tell Him everything that is going on with me.

Or.

If you can make time for your best friend every day, why can't you make time for your Savior and Creator who is sitting there WANTING to have an awesome relationship with you.

I know all these things. And I like praying, I really do. I like praying for people, and I like praying with people, and I don't mind praying out loud.

So why is this so hard for me to do consistently? How can I get myself to the point where praying to God is just like texting Dan(the love of my life) or Josh(my best friend forever)?

So far my answer to myself has been, "Be Intentional." Somehow make it a habit so you remember every day until it becomes something natural and not forced. Like, a fake it til you make it type deal.

I don't know. If you have any thoughts, please share them with me...