Dear God,

I have always heard, you have to have quiet time with God every day. Throughout my spiritual life I have done this off and on, and yet time and time again I find myself getting out of the "habit". When this happens it seems my focus in life quickly becomes superficial and selfish. It is amazing to me that when I give God a little bit of time everyday (when the TV is not on) I find that quickly my worries and concerns about my own life seem to be placed on the back burner and I start praying for other people. I love how God will always bring you back to reality and remind you that there are other people with worse problems. I am then able to be so grateful for all I do have and all of the amazing blessings in my life. There are always going to be trials and "irritating moments" but at the end of the day God is always there to remind you to put him in the center and watch it all fall into place. There are a lot of "journal writers" out there, and I know they can relate to looking back at previous entries and seeing how much has changed in their lives. I started a few years ago with my prayers. During my quiet time with God I write down my prayers. My prayer journal has truly become an outlet where I feel God speaking to me. I begin to write down things I did not even know I needed to pray for. I pray for other people even if I don't know exactly what is going on. There are even moments when I feel led to let them know I am praying. I cannot explain how amazing it has been to look back at all the answered prayers in the last few years. My grandmother, Jo, was the first person I ever saw do this. I have numerous stories where her written prayers have been answered years later. However, several weeks ago God really reminded me of how perfect his timing is. When I first asked Jesus to come into my heart I was six years old riding in a car with my grandmother and mother. Jo was always a true testimony of a woman who lived for Christ. She gave me "a Christian basket" as my gift at my baptism.  She told me to put all the special items throughout my life that remind me of how God is working. Byron and I moved to New Orleans in April of this year and brought entirely too much with us, of course. Fortunately we have a storage unit at our house. One night I could not sleep and I felt a strong sense of urgency to go to the storage unit and look in my Christian basket. A part of me thought this is insane but after laying there for a couple hours I finally decided to listen to my gut feeling. I dug through the storage unit and finally found the basket. I started to go through the items and I saw a letter in an envelope addressed to me from 1993. I of course could not remember what this letter was about. It was from Jo and as I started reading it I was overwhelmed with emotion. During the time of this letter I was in third grade and facing normal "elementary problems" that I vaguely remember now. As I kept reading she spoke about three different prayer concerns at that time and how God led her to write me this letter. What is absolutely amazing and can only be from God is that the three issues my family and I were going through in 1993 were also issues in our lives now! They were in different forms but the same struggles! Then I read the line that sent chills running up my spine, she stated what she believed was in store for our family. I knew that in two days we were going to know if what she stated 18 years ago was going to be true or not. Guess what, it was! How amazing is our God? I just sat there in amazement. I could not believe that I still had that letter 18 years later, when I lived in New Orleans and at the exact moment when my family needed it the most. I was reminded of God's presence and guidance in prayers the other day when I decided to vent through social media about something that was I was going through. There were two amazing Christian women in my life that both wrote and told me how God spoke to them to talk to me about what I was going through. I felt comforted and humbled through two amazing women that listened when God told them to contact me. Thank you Lord for always finding a way to be heard even when we are not listening! I am so glad that my grandmother had that quiet time with God that evening in 1993 and that he revealed himself to me through that letter almost two decades later. I now know that my prayer journal is not only for growth in my personal relationship with God but for others as well. It is not so bad when we realize that if we learn to not focus on ourselves it all just seems to come together much easier. This is a daily stuggle but I pray through time God will turn this selfish heart into one that learns to live for him all the time, not just when things seem to be going "my way."

Romans 8:26
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.