My post yesterday talked about a prayer that I mistakenly prayed in the springtime of my twentieth year; namely, “God, please lead me to do Your Will.”

At the time, my childhood Roman Catholicism had morphed into a drug-addled New Age mysticism so that I actually believed that I was “God,” but don’t be too impressed, because so were you, and so was the next guy or gal, and, in fact, we each, individually, ALL are “God.”

Yeah, yeah. Pretty stupid, huh?

But THAT’s what the twenty year old ME kind of, sort of believed, and so when I read a quote from the real life Maria von Trapp in my parents’ copy of “TV Guide” magazine who had interviewed the former nun turned Austrian baroness and wife of the heroic and handsome Captain von Trapp, wherein she said, “The only way to be happy in this life is to find God’s Will and then do it,” something resonated in my hedonistic, narcissistic soul. It did so, because I not only believed that I was “God,” but also because I secretly knew that I was NOT happy.

Almost immediately, thereafter, I started praying, “God, please lead me to do Your Will.”

I had no idea what the real God had in store for me just because of that honest and heartfelt and thoroughly mistaken prayer.

Had I known what would soon happen to me, the young lover of sex, drugs, and rock & roll that I was back then, who had just started praying that particular prayer so that he could get more of these things that he thought that he wanted, would have immediately STOPPED praying that prayer . . . and also cut out his own tongue for good measure.

More on the power of mistaken prayers in coming posts . . .