The praying thing

If you do not pray, if you do not believe in prayer, 

then you are living off the prayers of other people.

For Ash Wednesday, our pastor had us draw these slips of paper with words written by some man whose name I do not remember. I had three, but this one stuck with me. I honestly do not know where I stand on the whole praying/faith thing. I go to church and Bible study regularly, am a confirmation mentor, and participate in my church's community outreach, but I do not think that I pray. I will probably write more about this in the near future, because I have read a few related articles and need to make the time to think and write about it.

Regardless, prayer. We prayed before going to bed when we were really young. I say the Lord's Prayer at church. Occasionally I pray during the silent prayer at church. Outside of this I often "think" of people and hope they are doing well or wish them well in my "thoughts". So I wonder what makes a thought towards someone a prayer? If I want to pray for something for myself, do I think/say, "Dear God"?

What I do know is that there are three women at church right now at different stages of treatment for breast cancer. All three are or were in the handbell choir, as am I; two of them I know pretty well. The one woman I feel closest to has a double mastectomy tomorrow for a new tumor in the same breast where she had a tumor 15 years ago. She believes in the strength of prayer, and has asked for prayers from those who do so and healing thoughts from those who do otherwise. So whatever form of thinking/praying I do is in full force these days. She is very positive when she emails and in person, although I am sure it is not easy to be so. She lives alone with her pets, and had to make the difficult decision to put her 16-year old dog to sleep two weeks ago because with surgery coming up, his failing health was too much for her to worry about. She has had to coordinate her care and transportation for the two weeks until her first post-op appointment when she'll be able to figure out if she can drive again. She may or may not have to do radiation and chemo.

This is seriously one of my worst fears about living alone. Having to rely on and coordinate so. many. people. because you do not have a partner to help with most of it if you have a serious health problem.

In spite of all this, she leaned over a couple of times in church this morning to point out that this is the last day she ever has to wear a bra in her life, and if she wants to, she can wear a prosthetic bra and choose her own cup size. She has a fairly large chest, so she said she is going for an A cup the next time around.