Bigger Internet, Longer Prayer List

The internet keeps growing, and adding more to my prayer list. Not long ago, I got an email from a client I have had almost no interaction with aside from building his one-page website immediately after Hurricane Katrina. He was generously letting me in on the secret of Bill Gate’s wealth redistribution in the form of rewards for email forwarding. The person who sent it to him was very nearly my father-in-law twenty years ago, and that’s how long it’s been since I’ve been in touch with that family. The name is very unusual – there was no mistaking it, and he forwarded it to others in the family with equally distinctive names. It took me back two decades, and reminded me again of all the things I had done when I didn’t know the Lord. Things of which I’m heartily ashamed. And the traits that led me to those acts – pride, vanity, a selfish desire to manipulate circumstances to get what I thought I needed – are still within me. It was an opportunity to once again pray for the people I hurt, especially my former intended. It was an opportunity to pray for my daughter, who will turn 18 in a few months, and ask God to protect her heart and never let it get broken as mine was – and for her to be careful of others, as well.

I had to smile, though, remembering some really fun times. A crab boil where fifty or so people spontaneously started singing along with the oldies radio station, “Why must I be a teenager in love?” All night sessions of bizz-buzz and quarterbounce, Jaegermeister and Budweiser, and skinny-dipping in the pool with four other friends. Listening to his garage band butcher Led Zeppelin songs. Early morning fishing trips to Pointe a la Hache and ducking the game warden. The six of us were nearly inseparable for one magic summer after graduation. I would never have guessed, then, the terrible emotional state we’d all be in two years later. In spite of the hurt I experienced and the hurt I caused, I still can’t really regret it because it indirectly led to my first marriage and my daughter. It was also a lesson in just how right Josh Harris was when he recommended that people kiss dating goodbye. None of us thought of guarding our hearts back then – it would have been a completely foreign concept to us – and consequently every last one of us had them painfully broken. And so I also prayed that more people would learn of that book and save themselves and others a lot of pain. There’s no biblical requirement for prayer to be realistic, after all.

I subscribe to Google Alerts for several key clients, and one came in several days ago with a link to a blog post, complimenting the business of a client. When I saw the photo on the blog, I did a double take. Was it possible that this was my old roommate, one of the six friends from that magic summer? I looked at the About page, and yes, it was. Back in those days, I was the wild one. Today, she is a swinger who bats for both teams and is involved with a conspiracy-minded Ronulan. Well. Time to pray again. And wonder what she’d think of me these days… I’ve changed just as much, but in the other direction. I suspect she’d despise me if she knew me now. So I prayed for her and her Ronulan, considered how shockingly far God has brought me, and thanked Him for the peace and joy I have now, but never had back then even when I was having a good time.

Finally, yesterday I was contacted out of the blue by someone I worked with briefly. He mentioned my gun habit and this blog, so he’d obviously looked me up. (I wonder how many clients or potential clients I’ve offended with this blog. It would be wiser, perhaps, to not blog under my own name, but nothing is really anonymous and I like the accountability that comes with being publicly responsible for what I write.) It was exciting to hear from him, because he referred the first two steady clients to me that were the foundation for the rest of the business. I’ve prayed for him on and off over the years, and it was good to learn that he seems to be doing well. That contact was a good opportunity to thank God again for providing me with satisfying work I can do from home, and to pray for the person who helped kick off the business.

The world isn’t really getting any smaller, but it feels like it sometimes. I spent a good deal of my childhood in a town in Maine with about 300 residents. I could misbehave at one end of town, and my grandmother would know it before I got home. As people add more content and search engines pick it up, the internet is duplicating some aspects of that small-town feel. The anonymity is long gone and it’s increasingly easy to connect with people. And I thank God for that, too.