Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

I'm giving thanks this morning for the impossibles: Impossible people, impossible situations, impossible tasks, my impossible children, and even their impossible mother.

I'm really terrible at prayer. I forget to do it. I get distracted in the middle. I fall asleep or play games on Facebook instead.

But when people and things get impossible, I am driven... usually first to distraction..then finally to prayer.

I am grateful that God always seems genuinely glad to hear from me, despite my spotty correspondence record. God listens patiently for as long as it takes for me to remember to be quiet and listen. We usually end up laughing together. God gently pokes fun in the best way at my expectations of ease and possibility. I see the best in God and myself and my messy, messy life. 

Sometimes I cry a little, and God never pokes fun at that.

So keep it coming, impossibles!

• Tell me there's not one thing in the house you can possibly eat when I've just gone shopping.
• Point out the one fatal flaw in an otherwise beautiful church event.
• Email me every single week to tell me my parochial report is late, and never ask me what or how else I might be doing.
• Scramble my electronic calendar while I'm traveling in another time zone so that I double book my entire first week back in the country.
• Remind me that there are things my body took for granted in the 20s that it just can't do in the 40s, and that those things are never coming back.

Proper Christians no doubt have better ways of getting their prayer time in. But for now, my impossibles and I make a pretty good team.

Thanks be to God.