tricked-out prayer.

Prayer is a crazy trick.

Saturday, we helped clear the rubble of someone's house. Not just someone. Two someones who have names. Don and Thelma. We stripped their house down to its foundation, shoveling away pile after pile of soggy debris, and sifting through it all to find just one picture, then another, just something, anything, to connect them to the life they lived only a week before. As I stood in the area that had been their bedroom, thinking about how that tree used to be outside their window, Thelma walked over to me. I could see her tears. I jumped down. Putting my arm around her, I asked her how she was, and she wrapped her arm around my waist and started to cry. What do you do? You cry, too. My own tears came, and she leaned her head against me, saying that they'd been married 50 years, lived in this house for 42, and now it's all gone. We closed our eyes, and began to pray. And I have never known God as I knew Him in that moment.

As I held Thelma, and prayed, I saw my whole life fill in around me, and hers. When we stopped praying, we stayed close, and she told me that her favorite bible verse was Philippians 4:13. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," she whispered. There! Standing in the middle of a neighborhood-now-warzone, watching as a crew of people shovels away the remains of her belongings, she's telling me that she can do all things through Christ. She's showing me hope.

The faith of this woman thrust suddenly into dark circumstances threw open the doors to every step of faith I've said I'd never take. Not so much because if she can do it, I can, too...as because He's working in both of us. She reminded me. We stand through Christ who strengthens us.

Last Monday and Tuesday, after the tornado had ripped through, and without any idea that I'd soon get thrown into the relief efforts (thinking I'd give some groceries and call it a day, frankly), I had spent hours in prayer down in Clark Chapel, begging God for some direction. I can't help but link those moments with that in which I prayed with Thelma.

In the chapel, I called out for help in choosing a direction, through a change in my heart. I asked God to work in me, and make me into whoever it was I'm supposed to be. And then, there was Saturday's prayer. The skeptic, timid in faith, and too self-conscious to step up to a crowded altar, out in a field of decimated houses, praying with a woman I'd only met, in front of all of the people I'm most awkwardly faithful around. Maybe disaster just changes everything--makes you do things you'd never ordinarily do.

Or...maybe prayer does. Either way, Thelma's prayer, and her faith, brought me to a moment of stunning clarity. As I stood there, I realized...I want to do this. Whatever "this" is. This thing here, where I'm caring for people, and praying with them, and letting God work through me as a reminder of His constancy.

I don't know what job that is. That's actually not a job as much as it is the basics of Christian life. So, thanks to Thelma...I know what I want to do with my life. I want to be a Christian.