What did you pray for as a kid? Even if your family didn't have any religious practices, you must have prayed for something somewhere... you know, "just in case." Did you ask to get what you wanted for Christmas? For your favorite sports team to win the big game? For a miraculous escape from something bad that was happening to you?

Do you ever pray for those things now? Come on, it's okay to admit it. I catch myself doing it from time to time. Whenever I realize that I'm asking for something selfishly, I hear Janis Joplin in my head, singing "O Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz...?"

It's dawned on me recently how often my thoughts, prayers and musings focus on the things or abilities or qualities that I don't have. I don't write quickly enough or I can't get myself out of the day-job world or I'm not good at self-promotion. My writing isn't vivid enough or "meaningful" enough or whatever, my management skills can't keep something in the workplace running smoothly, or my social skills can't spare me from feeling awkward or uncomfortable at times. And I don't even have a Mercedes Benz.

There's a blessing one of my priests gives - she says she got it from Bishop John Shelby Spong. "Lord, send us anywhere you would have us go, only go there with us. Place upon us any burden you desire, only stand by us to sustain us. And break any tie that binds us, except the tie that binds us to you." It makes me think we get our a lot of prayers backwards. We ask God to intervene and make something different for us, when perhaps we should instead be asking God to show us how to handle the way things are.

My first attempt at writing prose fiction was a Doctor Who story for the original line of Virgin Publishing "New Adventures" in the mid-90s. I got rejected, but my rejection letter was two pages long written personally by the editor - which, in the publishing world, means I really got their attention. One thing she told me was that my writing style looked more like the old Doctor Who novelizations for children than what they wanted. Rather than go into a funk about that, I decided to run with it, and that's how I got into writing novels for kids.

BUT (And there's always a "but," isn't there?) that wasn't some kind of miraculous cure to my problems. I still struggle with my writing, all the time. And most of the time, it's about the qualities my writing doesn't have. There are very few aspects of the human condition that can be solved in a single moment, like flipping a switch. We have to face our demons every day - and instead of asking God to take those demons away from us, we should be asking Him to stand by us and help us face them.

I've come to the conclusion that my writing is never going to be "literary." I don't have it in me to bring out any deep insights about the human condition or anything like that. If there's any kind of consistent theme to what I write, it's "HEY!!! Let me tell you about this NEAT STUFF I found out about!" Which, actually, is a recurring attitude I have in my life anyway, so I suppose it's fitting. It'll never win me a Newbery Medal, but it has its place in the world.

And something else happens when we stop focusing on what we don't have - we become more grateful for what we do have. I may not have a Mercedes Benz, but I really like my Prius. Even our hardships can lead us to things we can be grateful for, even if we don't see it in the heat of the moment.

One of the most important life lessons I've learned is the importance of giving up resentment. Resisting the urge to dwell on or worry about or pray about things we don't have is one of the keys to doing that. I'm not an expert at it yet, but I'm working on it.