“If you are up there, God…”

    ” If you are up there, God…” At ten years old, I wondered if what my parents and the Catholic nuns told me was true. Or was it just to make their life easier? God loves you and wants you to be obedient, they’d say. My request to God that day: “Please make it so I don’t have to sing tomorrow at school in front of our parents.” If God had sneezed right then, he would have missed my request. But I wanted to know if God was real. Deep down I thought, Even if he is real, surely he’s too busy to bother with my silly prayer. After all, who am I that he would listen to me? A farm girl from a big family. Not expecting an answer, I put it in the back of my mind.

    The moment arrived. Our teacher called for us to line up, our class was next to perform. While waiting in line, my mind raced. Oh no! My parents and the nuns were lying to us. God isn’t up there. No one is watching over us. We are on our own. My world flipped topsy-turvy. Scary. Jitters set me on edge.

    After another teacher whispered to my teacher, she announced, “Sorry. We can’t sing today. We’ve run out of time.”

    My breathe caught. I looked up and spoke to God in my mind. You really are up there, aren’t you? A lightness flooded my spirit. It dawned on me. God listened to me, me … a nobody. He wanted me to know he was listening. And that he is real! And that he cares. He even answered my trivial prayer. Wow!

    From then on, the thought of God warmed my heart. But I didn’t want to bother him because he had to be busy with so many people and so much to do. I was wrong. Years later, God reached out to me again, showing me that he wants a close relationship with me … with every one of us, no matter who you are or what you were like. More of this story coming in my next post. The photo is a depiction of this day. Notice the girl on the left talking to God.

   I used this experience for Shay in Trapped book three of The Taken Trilogy.