For those of you who haven’t yet signed on to Mafia Wars on Facebook, for those who haven’t yet played the coolest game on the Internet, pay attention!

I suppose that opening sentence gives away my feelings on Mafia Wars, as it pertains to the title of today’s blog, but let me tell you – I fielded quite a few requests before I finally said “yes” and got started. Exactly one week ago.

Having banked my first (of many) million dollars, and moved up to Level 33, and having obtained an arsenal worthy of Don Corleone (at least in his early days), I feel somewhat qualified to wax a tad bit eloquently on this game – and really, “game” may be too banal a word for this.

Okay, perhaps I’m getting a bit carried away. After all, if one obsesses over used energy and repeatedly checks to see how many experience points one has, and how close to the next level one may be, hmmm – that individual may just have an addiction problem!

If one spends those millions on property, and improvements to said property, and mourns when that property is attacked – there could be problem. If one fights the same mob repeatedly, and loses repeatedly, but still keeps fighting – ditto.

On the other hand, if one thinks that the Godfather movies were absolutely the BOMB – and considers his knowledge of such prior to making any moves whatsoever on Mafia Wars – then that raises obsession to a completely new level!

Not sayin’ that I do that…nope, not me!

Seriously, though, Mafia Wars is a great time-waster…er, I mean, stress-reducer…. For myself, I usually login to Facebook in the morning and stay there all day. Not ON it all day, not really…. But I do check Mafia Wars rather, um, frequently. After all, I get “paid” every hour and I need to bank all that loot or someone could steal it from me – and believe me, this “pays” a lot better than anything else I do!

Wow, it’s been almost a week since I’ve posted – guess I had better give myself a good talking-to, or maybe it’s time for a written reprimand…nah, I’ll stick with a verbal warning.

So, we went to court. Well, the lawyers spent a good 2-3 hours “negotiating”, and getting approvals from the judge, and we actually – out of four hours total in the building – were in the courtroom for about fifteen minutes.

The upshot is that my husband did not abuse my son, and my son is to remain in foster care until at least October. I cried.

But title of this post points to God or, more specifically, conversations with God which, most of the time to me anyway, seem rather one-sided. We’re supposed to talk to God in prayer – and listen to Him. What does this mean?

While talking with my brother-in-law the other day, I mentioned that God needed to be loud, clear, and direct with me because I obviously wasn’t “getting it”. If He does indeed speak to me, then I must be very, very slow or very, very hard-of-hearing. Both of which, of course, may just be possible.

Sometimes it’s like talking to my husband, in the evenings when he’s either engrossed in a TV show or snoozing in his chair – nothing, no response, nada. Other times I wonder if I’m picking up a signal somewhere along the line, like radio waves maybe. I always wondered how one was supposed to know if that was God, or just an over-active imagination….

But Rob’s response to me was this: if God were really clear in His directives to us, we would likely try to fix things ourselves – and probably royally screw it all up.

Huh. Whadda ya know. I get it, I really do. Because for me, anyway, I’m a fixer. I try to figure out the best route, the best plan, the best outcome – and often I’m so busy planning I kind of forget to carry out the plan itself.

So Rob’s theory makes a lot of sense – and now I know that, since God’s answers to prayer are either “yes”, “no”, or “wait”, that obviously He knows me very well and has added a fourth: “let Me handle this one”.

This is most certainly true!