Chat Pack Challenge 10 –Answered Prayers

Today’s question: What is the clearest answer to prayer that you’ve ever received? 
 

Answered Prayers

Before storming out of the room to throw myself on my bed for a good cry, I tossed my hands in the air in defeat and shouted at my mom, “Just sign me up for veterinary school!”

My frustration was in no way directed at my mother nor was it her fault. It was simply the result of an ongoing conversation about what I would do with the rest of my life when I had not a clue. I was a senior and high school and still hadn’t decided if or for what I would go to college. I knew I was overwhelmingly ignorant about the outside world – having been raised on a farm and homeschooled, hardly ever going in to town or having relatively few friends – and the statement I’d just shouted was proof of that. As far as I knew, college – a degree in something, anything – was my only ticket on to bigger things.

While I really didn’t know what exactly I wanted to do for a living, I knew living with my parents and working as a farm hand was not favorable. Please note that I think farming is a very noble profession and I’m proud of my farming roots, but at the time I didn’t feel it was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I wanted to go out and change the world, to have an influence somewhere, yet do something that allowed me to use my creative talents. Why that day I thought veterinary school would do the trick, I have no idea. But I loved animals, so maybe that was it. Still do, in fact.

After a while my mom came into my room where I was sobbing into my pillow. We talked softly for a while and while I don’t remember all of what was said, I do remember her advice about praying and turning the situation over to God, asking Him for guidance and direction in my life.

So I did.

I prayed and asked God to point me in the right direct and to give me peace. The later he did almost immediately. The former he waited a few days.

In my hometown, our newspaper does a feature section on each of the graduating seniors each year. In that profile, they ask everyone what their favorite subject is. Mine, of course, was English.

What I didn't know was, about the time or just before my frustrated outbreak, I found out later, that the newspaper’s lone reporter quit, leaving the editor in somewhat of a bind for help. She remembered seeing that I enjoyed English and decided to call.

That’s when she asked me to apply for a job. And that’s when I fell in love with journalism. Now seven years later and still in the reporting business, I am just as in love with the path God sent me down as ever.

Since then, there have been many other numerous examples of this being God’s answer to my prayer, but that day I remember throwing myself down on my bed, much like I had earlier in frustration, but this time completely and totally overwhelmed with thankfulness. That phone call had been an answer to my prayer.