Can I get an AMEN from the choir?

Normally I don’t talk religion with people because although I’m personally religious in my own life, I don’t want to offend other people. I would rather eat live grubworms (and I’m talking the biggie sized grubworms here people) for breakfast, lunch and dinner for every day in a week than to initiate a conversation with someone about religion, especially if I don’t know said individual extremely well.

Having said all that, I have to tell you all something.

Prayer really works. I’m not talking about the nice “Our Father, who art in Heaven…” kind of praying, but more of the panic-driven, white-knuckle grip of two sweaty hands clasped tightly together while a fervent slew of words (many of which involve the phrases “Oh please oh please oh please” and somewhat grudgingly, “…if it be Thy will…”) issued forth from an equally tightly clenched mouth style of prayer (see also under entry for “What to do when you suddenly see flashing blue lights in your rearview mirror”). So how do I know for an absolute fact that prayer works?

My brother-in-law received a twelth hour phone call on Monday informing him that, if he was still interested, there was a spot with his name on it for the nursing program that he had applied for earlier this year.

Now, in the interest of a fully honest and possibly damning disclosure, the aforementioned fervent prayer wasn’t exactly on my brother-in-law’s behalf that he some how, some way, manage to get into the program, but rather more of a selfish nature. I was uh…actually praying on behalf of myself–for my sanity, what small amount of it remains.

You might be asking yourself what exactly my brother-in-law and my sanity have in common with each other. Well, this is your lucky day, because I’m about to share that exact information.

After applying to the previously mentioned nursing program, my brother-in-law, after (probably correctly) assuming that he had in fact not been accepted into the program since he had never received a phone call/letter etc informing him of such, decided that he needed to make some big changes in his life. He decided that first and foremost, he would move from the small, not much going on town where he currently resided with his parents, my in-laws and would instead move to the much larger town (about an hour away from his current residence) where my husband and I live and see if he could maybe work for a year and then apply to the nursing program at the nearby college. So my brother-in-law has been sleeping on my couch for the past three weeks, working and trying to find an apartment. Except that he doesn’t make very much money and it was looking more and more like actually moving out wasn’t going to work if he wanted to be able to do other things as well, things like eating on a regular basis and buying the necessities like 2-ply toilet paper. My husband, good brother that he is, wanted to help his brother out by letting him stay at our house for a few months so that he, the brother-in-law, could have some time to really get on his feet financially and eventually be able to afford his own place.

I, however, was not on board for that plan. Yes, my brother-in-law is a good guy, but the past three weeks have really shown me how far I have come in my training plan hard work and determination with my husband in the three years we have been married. Do you know how long it took to get my husband to stop leaving the toilet seat up? Long enough that I don’t ever want to have to go through it with someone else. Plus, having my brother-in-law around all the time would severely cut into my two favorite activities–walking around my house in various stages of undress (hey, I like to be comfortable and in order to do that my skin needs to be able to breathe and not from underneath layers of clothes either) and using the bathroom with the door open (I have a one year old. That alone is explanation enough for this one). In order for the small amount of remaining sanity I have left to keep me firmly attached to this side of not quite right, I need to be able to practice one or both of the above mentioned activities at a moment’s notice, things that are hard to do when there is company in the house.

Yes, I’m fully aware that I’m a bad person. Hey, we all can’t be praying for World Peace all of the time.