Prayer

When I was growing up in the Bronx, I liked some stuff about prayer.  For one, it could get people to leave me alone.  When my sister Maureen would ask me, "What are you doing?" as prelude to wanting me to be helpful, I would say I was "praying."  She was a good Catholic girl, so what could she do.  Tell me to stop praying and clean up my mess?  I even held a rosary wrapped around my hand.  It made me more believable.  I wasn't really praying at these moments.  I was practicing early stages of selfishness and self-will run riot.  I hated housework.  I asked my heaven Mother, Mary, to help me get out of housework.  I never saw a holy card, "Our Lady of Housework," so I thought maybe Mary might help me.  She was supposed to love and forgive kids especially.  So I was told.  As I grew up I realized that we all use prayer for one thing or another.  We all have an agenda.  It was not until I got desperate, where my will was making things worse, that I began to say, "Your will not mine."  It takes a lot to give up willfulness.  But it seems to be the way of change.  I even do housework now, but it is not my will.  I offer it up…to get Maureen into heaven.