Answered Prayers

For myself and my posterity.

I have felt the quiet stirrings of the spirit for two weeks now to write down my experiences with answered prayers these past few days, I can't put it off anymore.

Starting this summer, I have really struggled living in Lubbock.  I have a testimony that I need to be here.  That we were brought here by the hand of the Lord, and told again last year that, without a doubt,  this is where we need to be.  When that last answer came to stay in Lubbock, I promised the Lord I would do so with a more cheerful heart.  I wouldn't murmur about Lubbock anymore.  I did pretty well for several months, but slowly (as it often happens) murmuring thoughts crept in.  I wished it was prettier here.  I wish I was closer to my sisters, I wish I could go biking somewhere,I wish i was where lived so I could do that with my kids... I wish..i wish..i wish.  I began to feel guilty that I lived so far from my sisters who must shoulder many of our family burdens, and I felt that I was shirking my duty.  I began to let that bitterness build, all long realizing I wasn't keeping my promise to "happily" be in Lubbock.  It brought me to my knees one morning.  The bitterness and the guilt for feeling the resentment was just too much.  I had been praying daily to "bloom where I was planted", to find the beauty and joy in my surroundings, to be content.  But that morning  I simply wasn't.  In my heart felt prayer I sincerely apologized for letting the bitterness grow, trying to take care of my feelings on my own.  I pleaded with the Lord to soften my heart.  I expressed my most sincere desire to do His will, and not my own.  To see His purpose in my life, at this time, for this season.  I felt a little more peace, as I always do, after praying.  And went about my life. 

Not even a few days later I began noticing beautiful things all around me.  The beautiful songs of the birds outside.  The way the clouds swept over the big open sky.  The Big Open Sky.  I began to see how familiar and how attached I was to my surroundings, even the same street I drive on half a dozen times each and every day.  A love for Lubbock, for its beauty, for its people, began to fill my heart to the brim, pushing out all the lingering resentment, envy, and bitterness. I was reminded in a most intense way of my love for the people I am surrounded with, who are in Lubbock.  How much I love them, and how much they have touched my life, making me such a better person than I was before I knew them.  For the first time I felt like I was HOME.  And I love my Home.   I know with an absolute knowledge that this change of heart was nothing sort of a blessing from a very Loving Heavenly Father.  So often my pleadings in my prayers are answered with trials...my very own learning process to develop the qualities and attributes I have prayed for.  But for some reason, the Lord decided that this time He would simply change my heart, and open my eyes.  And it's all because I asked.  Based on my attitude, and the way I had acted the last few months, I definitely didn't deserve it, but because I asked, the Lord had mercy on me and gave me what I needed to fulfill my promise to Him.