Do you remember the neighbor who knocked on my door two weeks ago, right after I gave my financial concerns back to God? It’s in my post, The Prayer of Relinquishment. Well, here’s the update: She listed her town home with me that week, I sent out a blanket email to my whole brokerage, we launched on the MLS, and we received two strong offers within 24 hours! A nice gift to my very deserving seller, and a nice message to me of providential care from above.

But there were still those two offers to juggle properly. My seller and I stayed in close touch and I knew we were considering all options, but I still didn’t feel completely at peace. Then I remembered prayer. After 40 years of being a Christian, you’d think adjourning to my knees would occur to me sooner!  As soon as I said a mental prayer, the uncertain feeling went away and my mind cleared up. I added a mental prayer each time we navigated the next step – the options before us soon resolved into a clear, single way forward. The end result left my seller dazed and very happy, and it left me wiser and very grateful.

And what about the other desire I relinquished, for a husband? First, I just lost myself in discerning and then following God’s will. Happiness and contentment showed up, and showed up abundantly, with many high moments. A scripture came to mind more than once: The laborer is worthy of his hire. I found several versions on lds.org. Here’s my favorite:

And devote his whole time to this high and holy calling, which I now give unto him,
seeking diligently the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness,
and all things necessary shall be added thereunto; for the laborer is worthy of his hire.
(LDS Doctrine & Covenants 106:3, see also 1 Timothy 5:18 and Luke 10:7)

Additionally men just showed up! A clerk at Home Depot joked with me while making extra keys, a man at the Post Office started a conversation, three men came up to me to discuss my Healthy Food class a week later. I had actually put men out of my mind because the Lord had kept me quite busy, so all this not only took me by surprise but was a real departure from past experience.

Who knows where all this will go? Oddly, I don’t care as much as before. I trust that God knows best and that He isn’t capriciously toying with me. And most importantly, I found I really did want God more than a human male companion – something that will anchor my life forevermore and help put me on that proverbial pedestal women seemed design to inhabit. (That’s a whole other discussion….)

What did I learn from all this?

* Remember to pray, sooner rather than later, and trust the answers. They may be subtle or require us to change a preconceived expectation, but answers will be there, and they always bring peace and clarity.
* Let God be God and do His job. Don’t try to do it for Him by second guessing circumstances and what we think should happen or even worse, watching anxiously for it to arrive.

There’s an analogy embedded in The Lord of the Rings that I recall frequently. Remember when Frodo and friends tried to find the entrance to the Mines of Moria? They faced only sheer granite walls with no sign of a door. Then as the moon came out from behind the clouds, they saw iridescent lines defining the doorway, with these words above it: Speak Friend and Enter. Gandalf, thinking the word Friend was a form of greeting, tried every magic incantation he knew and none worked. Then Frodo had a paradigm shift and asked, What’s the elvish word for Friend? Of course, that worked, once they decided that the word “Friend” was the password.

I think prayer is like that too. We have to remember to pray in the first place, then we have to ask the right prayer, and finally we have to be willing to follow the answer. I hope when you face your own blank walls that you can remember a way will always appear if you ask the right question, truly wanting to follow the answer.

The Door to the Mines of Moria
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