If I had known. . . (Day 58, Year 3)

Today was not an ideal day, friends. 

It began with a child screaming; which in turn led to that child losing privileges and then as a result of the time the screaming took up (23 minutes), the child was late to school. The child refused to exit the vehicle and needed to be driven around for 11 minutes until such a time they could compose themselves enough to attend school. 

I prayed, robustly and passionately, during those 11 minutes of driving that the child would exit the vehicle and since they did, I guess God answered my prayer. 

If I had known what was coming, I would have prayed this morning for my child to never scream and maybe avoided the whole scene all together. 

Later, when the dog, who is elderly, but often acts like a puppy, was crying in his dog house for some mystery reason. I prayed again that the dog would settle. After approximately 5 Milk Bones, a dish of food (only eaten when I was watching, while on a work call, sitting on the basement stair adjacent to the wine which I was about 2 minutes from drinking at 11 am), 8 minutes of scratching behind his ears, 37 minutes of sitting in the same room, and another robust and passionate prayer (for the dog to fall asleep and stop crying) did the dog settle down and rest. Again, my prayers were answered, but if I had known the dog would become hysterical, I would've prayed for the dog to never cry and avoided the whole bizarre scene entirely. 

There were other less than ideal things today--things that made me feel like demons were descending upon the home--things that I would have prayed about if I had known they were coming. 

Isn't that the frustrating thing about prayer? So often it is done in a reactive way--Lord, take this burden, Lord, heal me, Lord, give me strength. I do pray even when I don't have a particular need; but it isn't specific enough and I certainly don't list all the calamities that I know can happen (Lord, take the mystery smell away. Lord, keep the furnace working. Lord, can you just stop Outlook from crashing). I sometimes wish I had a little bit of an ability to see the future--to be able to decide whether I should wake up at 5 am to allow for two hours of madness or if I can sleep to a hearty and relaxing 6:45 am. 

If I had known. . . perhaps it all could have been avoided, but then I wouldn't have a story to tell. No one would like me because I'd be insufferable in my success and happiness. So, I guess, there's that.