Bless the Food.

My mom has always been really hardcore about saying grace before meals. I mean to the point that she would force us to say it before every single meal we ate when I when I was younger. In all honesty I never understood the purpose of grace before lunch or breakfast...in my young mind dinner was the only one that needed some extra blessing. But worst of all was saying grace in public.

Basically until I got to college saying grace at a restaurant with my mom always made me feel super self conscious and like EVERYONE was watching me and judging me. Looking back this doesn't really make sense, I love the Lord and I want everyone to know about Him, but for some reason this "spectacle" as I say it wasn't something I could handle.

And what a surprise, college changed that! Through the unknowing help of some awesome, Jesus loving friends, and my new found love and understanding of prayer I've gotten over my weird adolescent fear. I've learned that yes, people may look at me like I'm a weirdo...but at least they are looking and are somewhat curious as to what I'm doing. It's just another easy way that I can be showing the Lord to my peers here at college.

So don't be freaked out, and bless the food!

xoxo,

Abby

Simply Spend Time.

Prayer. Basically until I was 18 I didn't really understand what it was, and in all honesty I'm still trying to fully figure it out. But I've learned a lot that past few months that I really changed my view of what it means to pray.

Prayer used to occur at two separate times is my life:

1. Before dinner (and sometime breakfast or lunch if mom was feeling feisty)

2. When something really bad was happening

Other than that I didn't get prayer at all. It was too abstract of a concept for me to understand so I kind of just gave up on it. I knew my food was holy on a regular basis and that's all that really mattered to me.

However I recently learned that the real meaning of prayer is not to make my food holy or magically solve all my problems (although it still comes in handy for that) but that it is one of the key ingredients to building an INTIMATE relationship with the Lord. Of course the idea of what to pray about still kind of scared me and was an aspect of my faith that I tended to stray away from because my ADD would kick in a cause my wandering mind to jump to something "more important."

Then I read this quote:

"Prayer is simply keeping company with God." - Clement of Alexandria.

Mind. Blown. It's just sitting in a me-and-God setting (Matthew 6:6) and just TALKING to him, about ANYTHING. Mind blown again. Jabbar from the show Parenthood puts prayer in a way that I really love - "You start with 'Dear God' and then just talk to him like you're talking to our friend." Leave it too a pop culture TV show to completely change the way I pray. God is my nearest and dearest friend so why to I always talk to him like I don't even know who he is? All I know is that is wrong, and right is using prayer as a really awesome tool to build an awesomely intimate relationship with the creator of the universe.

Simply spend time with him.

xoxo,
Abby