Does Prayer Alone Work? What YOU Can Do to Answer Your Own Prayers!

Remember the story of the man who prayed to win the lottery? Night after night after night he prayed and prayed and prayed to win. Finally, in exasperation, after losing every single lottery every time he prayed and because he firmly believed in the expression, “Ask and ye shall receive,” he wailed at God – “I keep praying to win the lottery and you never answer my prayers! Why?! I’ve asked time and time again, and you ignore me every time!” 

God answered simply, “Buy a ticket.”

We, too, must take action if we expect prayer to work. We can’t expect answers if we don’t participate in some way to solve our own problems! Because prayer works for me, I am listing what I believe are power-of-prayer factors regarding my role in receiving answers to prayer. They might work for you, too.

Love

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier. ~ Mother Teresa

Life is filled with bumpy roads, tragedy, stress, and unexpected life-altering challenges. But life is also filled with joy, love, happiness, and life-altering experiences. Unfortunately many of us judge what happens to us to be either good or bad, not realizing that what might first appear to be bad for us might actually be what we need at the time, and what we perceive as good for us is merely a matter of our own distorted impressions – not at all “good” for us. Every lesson we learn promotes our spiritual growth and judging whether or not something is good or bad really doesn’t matter.

What many of us don’t realize is that during times of discouragement, stress, anxiety, depression, and anguish, as we muddle through life alone, we sometimes – or often – need help. Not until we are in complete denial of what is happening to and around us and not until we experience despair due to frustration and the inability to control our situations do we reach out in prayer. 

But praying with hatred in our hearts decreases our chances of having our prayers answered. How can we expect to receive a loving response to prayer when our hearts are so filled with anger, rage, and hatred? By filling our hearts with negativity, we allow no love to enter!

When we reach out to others for help and they pray for and with us (and by “with us” I don’t necessarily mean in a church setting), we increase the power of prayer. Humans were meant to interact with each other. Many people, for some reason, often see asking for help as a sign of weakness, when, in actuality, reaching out to others is a sign of strength, because reaching out shows strength in admitting our vulnerabilities. None of us can do everything by ourselves, and the sooner we realize that we thrive with human connection and love, the sooner we will be able to reach out to others for help and not feel so alone in our personal frustrations and feelings of failure. 

I used to hate asking for help, though I often accepted help when it was offered to me. To me, asking for help meant admitting that I was incapable of taking care of myself or my children. Not being able to do everything by myself and then realizing I needed to reach out to others was a lesson that took me a long time to learn. A lot of us behave like 2-year-olds, who insist on doing everything by ourselves. As much as I hated asking for help, I loved when somebody asked me for my help; I loved the idea of being able to serve others. And when I realized the joy I felt in helping others, I accepted help from them in a more loving manner, because I knew how good helping felt.

While the energy of prayer alone could work, many prayers said on our behalf can produce overwhelming results. I can give you two examples of how prayer worked for me and for one of my loved ones:

When I discovered I had breast cancer, I reached out to friends and family members. Many of them prayed on my behalf. After only one chemo treatment, my tumor shrunk from 4 cm. wide to nearly imperceptible. Even my oncologist was surprised and couldn’t explain the tumor’s rapid reduction!

When one of my grandsons was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma, I again reached out to family and friends who sent positive, loving thoughts and prayers. His bone tumor was so large, everyone feared that he would lose his leg, or because young men his age were likely to die from this type of cancer, his life. Two years later, he is alive and well and walks with only a slight limp.

You could call our recoveries a fluke in both of these situations; you could say that the tumors might have shrunk anyway, but I know in my heart the power of prayer, and I will continue to rely on prayer for those times when I need it most. 

Why prayer works is because praying is an intentional thought, and thought is energy. So another important aspect of prayer is intention, which comes from willful, conscious thinking.

Intention

In centering prayer, the sacred word is not the object of the attention but rather the expression of the intention of the will. ~ Thomas Keating

Emotional intention plays an important role in determining the outcome of prayer. How much are you willing to invest in creating your own answer? If you believe in God, you know that God resides in you. So if God is part of you, you – and the God within you – play an important role in answering your own prayers. 

An asthma attack I had once was so bad, I was in the hospital for almost three weeks, nearly dying twice. I bargained with God that I would never smoke again if S/He allowed me to live. Yes, I bargained with God.

So am I suggesting that bargaining is part of prayer? No! You can’t bargain your way into having your prayers answered. I cheated a few times anyway (stupid, since I nearly died – twice) after I left the hospital, so I reneged on my own promise. Bargaining with God is bargaining with yourself. Can you make promises you can keep?

So what do I mean by intention? 

If you feel you really need help and everything you’ve done so far has resulted in more grief and pain, call out to God, your Higher Power, or your Inner Spirit, and MEAN what you say! Put your heart and soul into your prayers. Ask yourself how you intend to benefit from prayer and be specific with your intention. Praying for a new “home” could land you in a tent in someone’s back yard, but specific intentions with clear pictures of how you “see” your prayer being answered bring the right people and circumstances into your life.

Prayers said on the behalf of others is powerful, too. Stop focusing on only your own problems. Energy begets more energy and the more you focus on your problems, the more problems will arise simply because the energy you expend focusing on your problems and frustrations tells the Universe to bring more problems and frustrations to you. “Oh,” the Universe responds, “that’s where you want to focus your attention? OK. Here is more of the same.”

Claim your intentions positively. Visualize your problems disappearing, and replace your problems with possible solutions. You would be surprised by how many ways you can solve a problem. Figure out how you can contribute to the solution.

Sincerity 

Sincerity and truth are the basis of every virtue. ~ Confucius

Prayer is not a frivolous pursuit. You can’t just recite a bunch of words by rote and think, “Okay, I prayed, now answer me.” That’s like thinking, “OK, I went to church on Sunday; now I can swear, cheat, lie, commit adultery, and steal.” Yes, words by themselves have power, and repetition does bring a kind of meditative quality to prayer, but unless you’re earnest in your prayer, words alone, without emotional attachment to those words, are meaningless.

Want or need money or a love interest? Dr. Wayne Dyer often writes that wanting is the surest way to not get what you want, because what you are telling God and the Universe is that you are in a perpetual state of want or need. Also, money is only a representation of things you want. Money you need could be used to pay for power bills or rent. Instead of praying for money, pray for resources and help to come your way. Money could come, too, but instead of praying for money to fix your broken car, pray for the right person to come into your life to help you fix your car or bring you a new one. This kind of prayer has worked for me on numerous occasions! Though I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, I am always delighted that the right person at the right time shows up when I pray for help.

And if you want love to show up on your doorstep, become the person you want to meet and you will attract him or her into your life. Reflect the qualities of your perfect mate, and be that person. Visualize yourself as caring, compassionate, and loving so that caring, compassionate, and loving people will come into your life. 

Another way to be the kind of person you want to meet is to serve others.

Service

Do for others what you would have them do for you. ~ paraphrase of Luke 6:31 and Matthew 7:12

Do good for others, and ask what you can do to help those in need. Again, the Universe is very reciprocal. If you want something good to happen to you, do something good for others. Put yourself out there. You don’t have to bankrupt yourself by giving away all of your resources if giving means your children don’t eat, but find something you can do to benefit others, even if you think you don’t have anything to give. 

I always – and for many, many years, thought that since I was incapable of helping anyone financially, I couldn’t help anyone at all. I placed all of my personal value on my own lack of money. Then one day I heard about an organization that accepted crocheted hats for cancer patients. Having had cancer and knowing how important head coverings were for people with cancer, especially during the cold winter months, I decided that since one of my talents was crocheting, I would crochet hats for cancer patients.

One surprising realization resulted from changing my thinking that day. Because I previously thought I couldn’t help anybody with anything, I suddenly remembered that for years I always helped my kids – when they needed someone to care for their kids, for example, I was there. So maybe I couldn’t help the Universe, but I could help some of the people in that Universe, people who were close to me, like family and friends.

Using our creativity and talents to help others is a great way to express love. Any creative endeavor you enjoy could also bring joy to another human being. If you don’t think you have any talents, start exploring the many options available for you to learn. Maybe your talent lies in cooking or baking – bake something for a sick friend. Maybe you’ve planted an abundance of vegetables in your garden – share your bounty. Whatever you enjoy creating, consider sharing the final product with others. By serving others you’ll discover that giving truly is its own reward, because when you give, you also receive benefits you never knew existed.

Think you don’t have any talents to share with the rest of the world? Maybe you’re limiting yourself and your expectations. Read The Eight Creative Talents and click on the examples to see where you might fit.   

Action 

You can’t expect to grow a garden unless you first plant the seeds. ~ Theresa Wiza

Like the man in the lottery story, you, too need to take action if you want your prayers answered. YOU have to be the catalyst to your own answers. If you sit at home on a couch in your basement watching video games all day, praying to have a job you love where you can play video games all day, you can’t expect that job to come knocking on your door. You need to get up. Research available opportunities. Take classes to improve your chances of getting your ideal job. 

If you take no action, your prayer has zero chance of getting answered. Anything you do to educate yourself is one step toward achieving your goals. DO something! DO anything! Move! And after you take that first step, start looking for signs that your action and the prayers you said are working.

Signs

Signs, signs, everywhere a sign ~ Five Man Electrical Band

While working at one of the most unusual jobs I ever had, I knew instinctively, on the first day, that I had to get out. I might have been the only one who felt that the entire radio station was condemned and would soon crash, but it was very obvious to me that the station was about to either explode or implode due to its numerous inadequacies.

Just prior to my working there (I had been on a two-week vacation to visit my son, who was a Marine stationed in California), the radio station fired the person who hired me and nobody knew I was supposed to work there. I was supposed to have been the station’s “idea person,” but suddenly a new manager and idea person appeared on the same day I showed up. I was demoted to sales, a position I hated, but I needed a job and I felt cornered.

I considered going back to daycare, but when I provided daycare in earlier years, parents rarely paid me and what pay I did receive was dismal. Still I needed a job and decided that if I was going to go back to daycare, I would make my daycare special. I would put my heart and soul into it. I needed to make a decision quickly, though, because time was running out. I hated the radio station job, but I wasn’t sure I could make a living with daycare. Read Miracle on the Rock – Miracles Do Happen and Prayers Do Get Answered to learn how that situation “prayed” out.

The answers to our prayers sometimes don’t fit our expectations of what the outcomes of those prayers should be. Unbeknown to me, by accidentally putting myself below the poverty level when I returned to daycare, my lack of income actually helped me during my cancer scare. The God in me must have known that a cancer was brewing and my Inner Spirit placed me exactly where I needed to be when I needed to be there. Also, apparently when you are so poor, you can’t afford anything, let alone treatment, the government has a program to help you!

Forgiveness

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

What often holds us back from truly enjoying our life is our inability to forgive others. Forgiving somebody who raped your child, forgiving the person who murdered your parents, forgiving the kid who bullied you or your loved one is difficult, but forgiveness is not impossible.

Forgiving lifts the burden of hate from our souls and allows us to feel peace. We may never understand why others behave as they do, but as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminds us, we all have good and evil within us. We cannot control those who act on their evil thoughts, but we can learn to forgive them. We don’t know how, why, or when their minds warped into malevolence. We can, however, be grateful that we did not act upon our own evil thoughts.

Gratitude

When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. ~ Elie Wiesel

Above all, be grateful for everything you have and everything you are. You might think you have nothing, and therefore you have nothing for which to be grateful, but through all your pain and suffering, you’re still here. If you have a heart that beats, be grateful. If you have lungs that breathe, be grateful. If you have a place to live, food to eat, water to drink, people you love, and people who love you, be grateful.

Faith

“I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?” ~ John Lennon

Believe! Just believe.

Bottom Line

Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

We are all traveling our own life’s journey. We think we are alone, but a Higher Power or God is with us every step of the way and people everywhere are just waiting to help. We may not be aware of that power or even believe in prayer, but just because we don’t believe in something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

My definition of God may not be familiar to you. I don’t think of my Higher Power as some giant being in the sky, sitting on a throne awaiting prayer requests. My God is the collection of souls of everyone who has ever lived, everyone who is now living, everyone who will live, angelic beings, every form of consciousness, and everything in Nature. When I pray, I pray to that collective consciousness, and I believe I’m reaching into the collective soul of all of us. 

If we want our prayers heard by our Higher Power, we need first to fill our hearts and minds with love, make our intentions clear, be sincere in our requests, serve others, take action, look for signs along our way to let us know our prayers are being answered (see Miracle on the Rock story above for one specific sign), forgive those who have trampled our hearts and souls, and be grateful for every person we’ve encountered, for every meaningful relationship we’ve ever had, for every lesson we’ve learned, and for every challenge we’ve overcome. 

If we can accomplish those goals, we have made ourselves receptive to the power of prayer. And when the energy of your prayer connects to the energy of other prayers, prayer becomes an even more powerful force. So don’t be afraid to ask others to pray with you. You don’t have to be in the same room – you don’t even have to pray at the same time – but if more than one person gather together in spirit, the energy of your prayer will increase and your prayer will be answered, maybe, as I indicated earlier, not in the way you expected, but it will be answered.

In Search of Happiness

Maybe I’m too optimistic in my belief that ALL of us want to be happy, that happiness is something we all strive to achieve. If my theory is true, why then do so many of us sabotage our own happiness? Why do we unknowingly restrict ourselves from enjoying anything and spend our whole lives looking for something we think we’ll never find? Even if we allow ourselves to think for one minute that we were meant to experience happiness, we believe happiness is like the elusive butterfly – fleeting.

Many of us live on the opposite end of the spectrum from happy. We are bitter, angry, spiteful, jealous, and depressed. And if somebody suggests that we can be happy, we provide lots of excuses to show them how wrong they are. Who can argue with us when we cry about the loss of a parent, a spouse, a child, a home, a job, or a car? We have no reason to be happy, we explain.

Even years later, after we remarry (a drug-abusing alcoholic), give birth to more children (we can’t afford to raise), live in a home (that is too small for our family), have jobs (that don’t pay our bills), drive a car (that lives in the repair shop more often than on the street), we complain bitterly and hold fast to our reasons, or more accurately, our excuses, to explain our relentless unhappiness. Happiness was obviously not meant for us. 

If we had what we wanted or needed but currently don’t have, we explain, we’d be happy. Money, for example, for most of us, would make us happy. We don’t need extreme wealth, though prosperity would be nice – we just need enough money to pay our bills, take a trip, and buy a few luxuries now and then.

So we cling to our belief that others were meant to be happy. We think our lives are worse than anyone else’s life. We think that everything we do is worthless and meaningless. Nothing matters anymore, because everything we do is never good enough. We’ll never be able to support our families, we’ll never find the job that could pay our bills, we’ll never have that child we always wanted, we’ll never … (the list goes on and on).

We think that even if we could pursue our passions (we don’t have enough money to quit our jobs), or if we were wealthy (that will never happen) or if more people supported us and believed in us (our families and friends are about as supportive as stretched out pieces of elastic), maybe THEN we’d be happy. But some very wealthy individuals who have pursued their passions and have had the support of family and friends are still so unhappy they feel their lives aren’t worth living. So you wonder, what’s the point?

STOP! Just STOP! Let’s reexamine our thoughts. We have just invited a a hoard of negativity to enter our spirits, which are now filled with so much self-criticism, hatred, pessimism, and pain that they have hardened to a point where no positive energy can enter. That protective wall we’ve built around us serves only to keep all the negativity inside, smoldering and festering, until we become one giant inflamed sore. Happiness tries to get in, but our walls are too thick, and we’re too stubborn to allow it entry.

And many of us drown ourselves in alcohol and fill our bodies with drugs destined to make even the most positive among us sink deeper into the pits of hell. 

We need to stop abusing our bodies. We need to stop poisoning our minds (and the minds of others who look to us for guidance). We need to open up our hearts and allow the possibility for a little bit of happiness to enter. 

If we don’t, we become bitter old hags with permanent scowls on our faces, pushing away every good thing that comes our way, because we don’t believe that good things can happen – for us. We have convinced ourselves to believe we don’t deserve to be happy, even while that little voice inside us tells us that we do. Why pay attention to that lying, conniving voice when we know that its purpose is to trick us? We are living proof that nothing good happens for people like us. And we compare our heartaches and devastating losses to those of others. 

But comparing ourselves to others is a recipe for disaster. We all follow our own paths, our own loves, our own passions, and what we believe to be our own destinies. Being on my path makes me no better or no worse than you. My progress in life, while connected to yours, in no way is meant to intimate you any more than your progress is meant to intimidate me. 

We are all at different levels of spirituality, emotional maturity, intellect, and physical development. Would you compare your phase of emotional development to that of a teenager? Would you condemn the teenager for not knowing how to regulate his or her hormones? Would you criticize a baby for not knowing how to walk? 

Sadly some parents do, and babies, while unable to comprehend our words, understand and interpret very well our emotions. Inherent in that infant is the ability to stand upright, but our criticism and harassment cannot force Baby to stand before Baby is ready. 

Why then do we force ourselves or our loved ones to travel paths we think they should travel at the pace we think they should move when they are not ready? Why can’t we recognize that our friends and family members are on their own paths and at their own stages of development? If more of us supported and encouraged others – and ourselves – to travel the paths we were meant to travel, more of us might find happiness.

We also need to stop thinking of ourselves as sinners. To feel that we were born with sin and that we have to spend the rest of our lives ridding ourselves of the disgusting filth that embodied us from the moment we were conceived, we place ourselves in a type of Hell from which we may never escape. 

Isn’t sin nothing more than succumbing to temptation? How can a newborn be expected to resist temptation? – Even if the baby was born with sin, how can a defenseless infant be expected to resist temptation? And how can we be born with sin that is supposedly already a part of us unless we brought it forth from a past life? 

Are we to believe in a punishing God and that God is still punishing all of us for the sins committed by Adam and Eve? Maybe we need to rethink our purpose in being on this planet. Maybe the time has come for us to recognize that we have choices. If we believe in the teachings of the Bible, we know that ALL OF US were given Free Will! And because we make our own choices, others make their own choices as well. 

Sometimes their choices put us in danger. Sometimes their choices hurt us. Sometimes their choices kill our family and friends. But so do our choices affect them. Are we always making informed choices? If God took away our Free Will, our ability to choose, would we then be happy? Would we be happy living as robots, unable to make our own choices, because they’ve already been made for us? Why bother living at all if we can’t decide how to live our own lives? 

We have to accept that we have the ability to choose our thoughts, even when others humiliate us, degrade us, and behave in ways that make us miserable. 

As I was in the midst of writing this piece, my mother called to tell me that her grandson (my nephew) would soon be moving and that she was trying to find somebody to take the wall unit that she and my dad had given to him. I had just been telling one of my granddaughters, who had spent the weekend, that I needed a large wall unit to hold all my crafts. 

So when the subject about the shelves arose, I jumped at the opportunity to take something that once belonged to my parents. I told my mom I wanted it and she immediately went on a tirade. “You are NOT getting it. And where would you put it anyway? You are too unstable! You never stay anywhere long enough! How can I expect you to be living anywhere for very long when you move constantly?”

While her reasoning made no sense to me (what difference does moving make?), I understood (but didn’t really understand) that she wanted a stable environment for her very expensive shelf unit. Later, when I talked to my son, who will be taking the shelf unit, I learned that my mother had told him that she knew I was angry with her and that maybe she shouldn’t have been so honest. Those words knocked me off my feet. I found myself even angrier, and I plunged into a depressive state that took a couple of days to dissipate.

Why? I have a tendency to become depressed (usually over lack of money, though), and I always have to resist depression. My mom has never been to my home and she has told me that she will never visit my home, because she won’t drive this far. The problem would be solved if she would spend the night, but she refuses to spend the night. She has no idea how much space I have or why I would want the shelf unit in the first place, etc. But more importantly, she lashed out at me for – what? Why was she angry with me for wanting to take the shelf unit she no longer needed or wanted? 

And how could I continue writhing an article about happiness when I was now so miserable I couldn’t think happy thoughts – at all – in my depressed state of mind? My thoughts went back to the mom she was to me 6 years ago. If I had asked for the wall unit then, she would gladly have given it to me. I had been newly diagnosed with breast cancer, had to go through surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, and she was so terrified I might die, she would have done anything to make me happy. 

But, I realized, because of past psychologically devastating family situations, once the cancer treatment was over, our relationship would resume its stasis. I was back to my designation as the unforgivably weird and unstable renegade in my family. 

And then it hit me – happiness isn’t always an easily achievable state. I needed to understand that fact if I was going to continue writing this article. I’m also reading Dr. Wayne Dyer’s, Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life. Even if my mother was trying to impart to me the message that I was incapable of caring for anything, even something nobody wanted, I had to learn that what my mother, and others, think about me, is really, according to Dr. Dyer, none of my business. 

Though we try to overcome our sadness at things others say about us, though we may become depressed when people who are supposed to love us act as if they are fully intent on “putting us in our place,” wherever they think that place is, we have to recognize that sometimes angry, miserable, or even just critical people will come along to challenge our attempts to be happy. 

What I’ve learned and what I continue to learn, is that we can’t allow others to threaten our happiness. Whatever my mother’s reasons were for not wanting me to take the wall unit, I had to let go of my desire to make sense of her adamant stronghold about me being unstable. She may go to her grave thinking I’m inept, but I refuse to go to mine believing her.

What I have also learned over time is that we can’t always change what happens around us and we can’t always change what happens to us (though we have some control over what precipitates certain events that occur, like tempting fate by texting/drinking and driving). We can change our reactions, our perceptions, and our beliefs. We can choose to affect our destinies by following our own desired paths, even while others are standing on our paths, intent on pushing us over the edge.

Ignoring them isn’t always an option. Maybe they are our parents, our children, our siblings, or our best friends. But we can choose our reactions to them. We can understand that maybe they are limited in their abilities to move along their own paths, because they’ve been stuck in one position for so long, they don’t know how to proceed. Maybe they’re so focused on us making mistakes they can’t see their own blunders. Or maybe they think their job is to guide us along our paths at the expense of their own journeys.

We can also open our minds to other possibilities. Maybe we brought our sins into this life from a previous existence and the reincarnation theory, “What you reap, so shall you sow,” is playing itself out. Another example for opening our minds is the study of Vedanta, a type of Vedas philosophy, which tells us that, “our real nature is divine. God is our innermost Self, an underlying reality that exists in every being. Religion is therefore a search for Self, a search for God within. We don't need to be ‘saved.’ At worst, we are unaware of our true nature.” (See Source 1 below.) 

Another explanation for Vedanta appears here (Source 2 below): “Vedanta is one of the world’s most ancient religious philosophies and one of its broadest. Based on the Vedas, the sacred scriptures of India, Vedanta affirms the oneness of existence, the divinity of the soul, and the harmony of religions. Vedanta is the philosophical foundation of Hinduism; but while Hinduism includes aspects of Indian culture, Vedanta is universal in its application and is equally relevant to all countries, all cultures, and all (religions).” (What I like about the Vedanta philosophy is that Vedanta treats Christ and spiritual teachers from other religions with equal respect.)

If we learned to accept that happiness is obtainable, we would want to explore the truth that resides in all of us, that we were born with a divine nature, an acceptance that would change our belief about who we are. Believing we are divine does not mean that we are sinless. We are human, after all, but believing in our own divine nature opens our hearts and minds wide enough to recognize that God truly does reside within us! 

Isn’t that what even Biblical scholars have been teaching us all along – that God resides within us – that we don’t have to search outside ourselves to find God? How can we be born with sin if God has dwelled inside us from the moment of conception? And if God co-exists with sin, why do we pay more attention to the negative aspects of our nature (the sins we and others choose to commit)? Why can’t we focus more on our divine nature (the God within)?

One explanation is that we allow greed, anger, gluttony, lust, envy, pride, and sloth (the seven deadly sins) to control us. To combat those sins, we need to replace greed with generosity, anger with compassion and kindness, gluttony with temperance, lust with self-control, envy with empathy and love, pride with humility, and sloth with action. (See Source 4 below.) And maybe we need to start paying attention to little things that we tend to dismiss when we are in the throes of negativity, those almost unrecognizable moments of joy, like this one:

One year, when I was working two part-time jobs, going to school full time, raising my three youngest kids, and getting them to all their after-school activities, I sat in a Dairy Queen parking lot on a beautiful Spring day, waiting for my youngest daughter to get her free ice cream cone (a coupon prize from one of her teachers). Her siblings were with friends and I was trying to relax before I had to return home to wrestle with homework – theirs and mine – and figure out a way to pay the bills. I had been arguing bitterly with their father over the child support he was supposed to pay in keeping with inflation, but he refused. 

Instead, though for eight years the cost of living had risen dramatically, he continued to pay what he paid eight years before. I calculated the difference between what he had been paying and what he should be paying to be the weekly cost of two gallons of milk, a box of cereal, and a loaf of bread. My frustration over his refusal to obey the courts put me in a terrible state of mind. Though I kept praying for some relief, though I kept asking for a miracle, I was always choking back tears, always ready to pound my fists into my steering wheel, my floor, the walls, or even my forehead. One time I flattened a ring on my finger because I had pounded the floor so hard, crying out to God and blaming Him for putting me in such a state of poverty, that I couldn’t get the ring off my finger without using a pair of pliers. 

So, while my daughter stood in line, waiting for her ice cream cone, I stared out the window and, once again fought back tears as I tried to enjoy the weather and not let her see the pain I was in or the frustration I was feeling.

In that moment, a little girl, who was maybe 3 or 4, came up to my driver’s window as her dad looked at me through the front window of my car. She handed me a handful of dandelions, and, in that moment, my heart melted. The little girl didn’t pay my bills and she didn’t entice my X to pay child support, but she came in answer to a prayer. Unbidden, she offered me something my own children had given me numerous times before, a handful of dandelions. 

In that moment, I felt something crack open inside me. I truly believed that this child had been sent to me by God, who I imagined was telling me, “Open your hand. Accept this gift. And open your heart. Remember this moment with joy. Many more will come. Recognize them. In time, you’ll understand that true joy brings happiness.”

My life didn’t change dramatically or immediately. I still found myself getting fired up over my X and his refusal to accept responsibility for his children. And I still fought with creditors over bills I couldn’t afford to pay. But I felt a shift of energy inside me and I never forgot that little girl and her gift.

Today I am happy. I live at just above (yay for small steps) poverty level and I live on a strict budget, but I am happy. Through the sale of my manufactured home, I was able to buy new furniture (my kids grew up with nothing but borrowed furniture). 

My true joy, though, comes from spending time with my kids and grandkids, from visits with friends and family, from the change in seasons, from finding a skein of yarn that I think would make a nice project, from watching new episodes of NCIS or Criminal Minds, from knowing I have a plethora of movies and shows I can watch on Netflix, from walking on my treadmill, or from finding time to read a book. 

Most recently, I began a new business, Crystal Butterfly Creations Message in a Bottle. Will it thrive? I don’t know. My happiness doesn’t depend on whether or not this business succeeds. My happiness derives from knowing that I have talents and skills I can share with others. My happiness comes from knowing that God resides within me and that I can connect with that Source of Happiness and Joy every minute of every day if I open my heart and my mind to recognize the positive energy I draw from that Source – from God. I just have to remember, even in times of sadness and frustration, that God is there waiting for me to notice that Fountain of Joy within me.

Life has never been easy for me. The struggles oftentimes have been insurmountable, just as they have been for everyone else. We can’t expect to remain in a blissful state 24 hours every day. We all encounter frustrations and tragedy that require our attention and zap our energy.

But we can trust that life is cyclical and that “all things must pass,” including our own lives. So while we’re still alive, let’s start enJOYing those little things that bring us JOY right now, today. Let’s learn how to be happy by following our own paths, encouraging and supporting others to follow their own paths, and guiding them along their paths, trusting that we are all where we are meant to be. 

Let’s support others who have fallen off their paths and who have ignored the God within them. Let’s help others realize their talents and skills, and let’s encourage them to share their gifts with others. I leave you with this quote from Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

Sources:

1 Vedanta

2 What is Happiness?

3 Vedanta Overview

4 Seven Deadly Sins and the Virtues They Sin Against

Does ANYTHING I Do Matter?

My whole life has been a struggle of some kind or another. Even though intellectually I have always known that everyone else struggles, too, I wondered why some people got occasional breaks from their struggles while I spent every waking hour praying for miracles. Maybe those people found a better paying job, or they came into money, or circumstances changed for the better in some way for them. For me, though, my life has been one endless stream of strife – financial, physical, and emotional. Learning how to survive has been one long relentless challenge that I’m still learning to overcome.

While I think I’ve been handling my physical maladies fairly well, I have to admit that I have failed to conquer the emotional and financial state in which I find myself drowning. But I’ve come to some conclusions about life in general and, after living for over 5 decades, I’d like to share my philosophy with you.

Because I believe that we are all spiritual beings inhabiting bodies for a short time, and because I believe that spirit is energy and energy lives forever, I know that the human life span – the time we spend on Earth – is, in the scheme of things, very short. As our spirits progress toward understanding our purpose for being here, I’ve come to believe that perhaps we summon ourselves before we are born to experience challenges we need to overcome and life lessons we need to learn in order to become One with God. 

As I examine my current life, I have to ask if I was perhaps, in a previous life, a let-them-eat-cake kind of person. Might living my current life in poverty and near poverty teach me lessons I otherwise might never have learned about survival? Maybe I needed to learn empathy by actually experiencing life with very little material possessions, or maybe I didn’t want to be encumbered with a lot of stuff. The burden of knowing that nobody is willing to pay you the salary you need to raise your children is overwhelming. Whatever the reason, though, I’ve decided that I’m now comfortable with what I have. I don’t need a new car or my own home.  

Maybe I was in perfect health in my past life, and, because I was fortunate physically, I criticized others for things about which I had no knowledge and over which they had no control. I remember a woman who appeared once on Oprah (I think), who criticized people for not walking straighter. As I watched her, I thought of people who, for one reason or another, couldn’t walk straight, and I realized how ignorant all of us can be from time to time about problems others experience. She felt the problem with people was that they just didn’t try. “Let them eat cake, let them stand up straighter, let them raise their four children on minimum wage, let them live in tents.”

From asthma, allergies, and arthritis to a bad back to cancer to migraines to a persistently swollen right foot to bad eyesight, I’ve experienced a wide range of physical limitations. From being molested and raped to being robbed, from losing jobs because perverted bosses wanted more from me than I was willing to give them, from feeling abandoned by people when I needed them most, I’ve experienced a wide range of emotional issues. And from never making enough money to raise my children or even to take care of myself, I’ve experienced what it feels like to live below the poverty level.

But like most other people, I survived. Like most people who go through challenges, I’m still here. And I wonder – what if we choose – before we are born (when we are still in spirit form) – to learn certain life lessons in order to advance our souls? What if we are the ones who control our destinies? But because we don’t want our former lives to influence decisions we make in this life and we don’t want memories of our past lives to overshadow the work we have to do in this life, we decide to become oblivious to choices we made before we were born.

If I killed someone in a previous life, for instance, and I was aware in this lifetime that I killed someone, I would probably become so focused on that horrific crime, I’d be more inclined to find the family I wronged and make up for my behavior than to focus on advancing my soul. If I believed in reincarnation and past lives, I’d probably want to learn my previous name and research my old self. I’d place too much time on my past and not enough time on my present. Instead of advancing my soul, I’d be stuck in the past.

Maybe, prior to the lives we live today, we create our own punishments for past crimes. I like to think that all of us, in our souls, live to a certain code of conduct and that all of our souls together – past, present, and future – connect to that one source of love that goes by many names, God. I’d like to think that at the end of our lives, when we view the way we treated people, we can ask for another chance, and God grants us that opportunity. Maybe our suffering has nothing to do with what God does to us and more to do with what we do to ourselves to heal our souls as we return to God. And maybe loved ones work together to help each other heal our souls. 

So in answer to the question I proposed in my title, yes, everything I do matters. Every choice I make comes with a consequence or a reward, and though I may be unaware of the impact I have on the people around me or have any idea when those consequences or rewards will surface, I have to believe that for all of us, what we give out does come back to us and what we reap we do sew. God connects with us through our soul, lives in our heart, and guides us through our conscience. Just because we can’t see results today doesn’t mean they aren’t occurring. Karma may be waiting for us the next time around.