I was thinking...over thinking

So, everyone warned me I would feel awful the day after the wreck (for those who aren't so quick, that's today). I really don't need to feel anyworse than I normally do, so I prayed that I wouldn't feel any worse today than I did yesterday.

But, praying's more complicated than it used to be.

When you're a little kid you talk to God like you talk to your parents.
"Please, please, please, please, please give me what I want!"
In both instances you're usually on your hands and knees.

When you get older people start telling you that you need to make sure you thank God and praise Him as well ask asking Him for things. Well that makes sense right? But then I start worrying that my praises, thankfulness, and requests aren't even. In fact, shouldn't my praises and thank-yous be more than my requests? How unfortunate that I'm best at asking for things.

But I still figure that I can swing it. I mean, I usually like God's solutions to things, so I can thank Him for all of those things. And, I sing praise songs at church...and those kinda stick in your head so you're humming/singing them all week, so technically I'm praising God rather often (albiet absentmindedly).

Then you get a little older and people (and by people I mean keynote speakers at Christian conferences) tell you that God's entire goal in creating the world (and therefore you) is to bring glory to Himself. Since He's God it's a little hard to complain. But, then that means that everything in your life revolves around whether it brings more glory to God. Since it's almost impossible to know what brings more glory to God how can you ask for anything? Don't you always have to say, "Dear God, please do whatever you want" ? Anything else feels a little pointless.

After all, Paul prayed for the "thorn" to be removed and God didn't...apparently for His glory. The mother of the blind man might have prayed for him to be healed, but nothing would have happened until the man was all grown and Jesus walked by and rubbed dirt in his eyes.

But then again, I don't recall Jesus telling us to pray for things that glorify Him, at least not in so many words. He does talk about asking God for what we need, ranging from bread to forgiveness. And he does remind us that earthly father's don't give their kid's bad things when they ask for good things and that God is even better than our earthly fathers.

So, in the five seconds that it took this all to go through my head...I decided not to worry about all the ins and outs of how God processes our prayer requests and decides whether He is going to say "yes" or "no". I just asked. And I feel fine.