Praise God! And be aware of it!

Praise God! He has shown his love in such powerful ways that I could never have hoped for. I have to write about it, declare it publicly and unashamed because it is just that amazing.

Throughout my life, the main things that I prayed for in my desperation were these:

1. To have someone that understands me.
2. To have someone, not just family, that loves me regardless of what they find out about me or who I am. Not that family is unimportant or insufficient, but I felt like, in order to know that I could be loved, it couldn't be a family member.
3. To be loved "specially" -- in other words, to not just be placed in a group of people that one person loves, but to be special to them. Even in high school, I never prayed that it had to be a boyfriend (although that would have been nice). I just wanted love.

Years went by. Years of pain and struggles and dark feelings of isolation. I never lost faith because I believed that everything would work somehow for good. But in the meantime, as my emotional/mental health began to dwindle, I seriously doubted whether God would ever decide that I needed to have those sorts of people in my life. I seriously doubted whether he cared if I was happy.

And now, suddenly, it's happened all at once. I have multiple people that love me and accept me, no matter what. I mean, it's almost overwhelming. All those prayers came true. And I'm not healed -- it's not like everything's better -- but those three God decided to answer.


Of course, the human part of me asks, "God, why couldn't you have spread that out a little more? It would have been great if, say, in the middle of high school I had one of them answered." But that's not the way God works, and that's not for me to understand. And obviously, I got through it, so he knew what he was doing.

And the reason why I'm writing it down, other than just to praise him, is that it's so easy to forget that these are prayers that have been answered. A friend of mine reminded me once that you should not expect instant gratification of prayers. For me, it took about seven years. For others, twenty, maybe more. When your prayers actually are fulfilled, maybe you've stopped praying or expecting God to answer them, so you don't realize it. But the answering of prayers is not always instantaneous. Don't get me wrong -- sometimes it is -- but not always. So it's easy to look at the people in my life and think that this is just something good that has happened to me. And it is -- I am blessed to have these people in my life. But it is also clear-as-day evidence of God's faithfulness and love.

So, to anyone who's reading this somehow, I would remind you to continuously look back on your prayers, and see if the good things that happen in your life -- big or small -- just happen to be subtle, gradual, or long-awaited answers to your prayers. And then... praise God! Because he will answer them.