Eat, Pray, Love: India

"And that's why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through our hands.

During this book, Eat, Pray, Love, I have laughed and cried, felt sorry and hungry, wanted to travel and see the world but reading about her journey in India makes me want to pray most of all.

I have been with her as she searched for God and a spirtual awakening, you might say. She has been held back by her guilt from her failed marriage and spent months in an Indian Ashram trying desperately to find something to ease it. She sat on a rooftop of the highest building one night and told herself to forgive. Forgive herself, forgive her ex-husband.

She couldn't be any closer to God standing on that rooftop and she decided to not come down until she found some peace. She created her own spirtual ceremony. She said that "if you bring the right earnestness to your homemade ceremony, God will provide the grace. And that is why we need God". After her homemade ceremony she did a spontaneous handstand. "We have hands; we can stand on them if we want to. That's our privilege. That's the joy of a mortal body. And that's why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through our hands."

This past weekend Zak and I and our friends, Jeneane and Jason all went hiking. It was a beautiful day that screamed Spring has arrived! I had a lot of fun. Of course everybody who knows me knows I'm not an advertureous, lets get dirty, kind of person and this hiking trip had its moments that were...well, just that. After hearing what Liz said about "that's why God needs us" and doing a handstand and feeling the dusty tiles underneath her hands and feeling the cool breeze on her feet, it made me think about how many times I've not used my hands. How many times I've tucked them close to my body so they don't get dirty or I don't get a bug on me. Instead, I should be feeling everything, taking everything around me in.

I'm not going to lie. I definitely need to get over some serious fears of bugs and spiders to fully appreciate my new desire to touch, feel, and use my hands. But that is where prayer comes in. Prayer for God to use my hands the way he needs them to be used and to feel what he needs me to feel.