Maybe Prayer Doesn’t Have To Be So Hard

I think that somewhere along the line, I got the idea that prayer had to be difficult. That it was more effective that way.  Better somehow.

I learned growing up in my Baptist church that I should pray every day, that it was something I should plan and work towards. My goal once I hit middle school, then, was to have a quiet time every morning before the rest of my day started. I did my best to get up early so I could spend time reading my Bible and praying. I had a Bible reading plan, one that would take me through the whole thing in a year.

I also had a list at the back of my Bible, full of all the names of people I wanted to remember in prayer. It included people in my church who were hurting, sick, or sad. My friends were on there too, especially the “lost” ones. Also, my family, the church’s missionaries, and even the President, because the Bible said to pray for “those in authority over you,” which included politicians, even the ones my parents didn’t like.

I think I might have learned the ACTS method of prayer in Sunday school, with its helpful acronym to keep me on track. First, I was told to start prayer sessions with the “A,” which was “Adoration,” of God, then move on to “Confession” of my sins, followed by “Thanksgiving,” and then at the very end, “Supplication.” That’s finally when you got to ask for things that you needed. But not before you went through all the other steps first.

Try not to get them out of order, I was told, because that would be doing it a little wrong. God would still listen, probably, but it seemed like He (God was always a “He” back then, and his name should always be capitalized, because that showed proper respect) would be more inclined to help you if you did the adoration thing first.

I think I learned that sometimes it was good to kneel for prayer, even if that hurt my knees a little, at the side of my bed on the gray linoleum.

You know, there is nothing wrong with any of this. The ACTS method of prayer is lovely. I was taught by well-meaning people who loved me, people I loved, who were doing the best that they could with what they knew. But the end result for me of all of this well-intentioned teaching was that I spent a good amount of time in middle school and high school feeling bad about my prayer life. This was because I usually overslept and didn’t get through that list in the morning.  I confess that even to this day, I have never made it all the way through my “Read the Bible in a year” plan. I’ve tried numerous times, but I usually get bogged down and give up by the time I get to Leviticus.

For many years, prayer was a duty and a task for me, something that was first on my “to do” list but that I never did very well. I had the best of intentions, but never felt like I did enough. It was important, serious work without much joy. It was just another place where I failed.

Thank God this has been changing for me. A big reason for this is the time I’ve spent these last years with my weekly centering prayer group. I am finally understanding that prayer is bigger than  something I need to do at a set time each day. It’s bigger than a list of names in the back of my Bible. It doesn’t have to be scheduled. It doesn’t have to be work.  It is not something that I am “good” at, or that I “suck” at, or that I need to strive to improve. It can be easy, like breathing or sitting in silence. There is no failure there. It can just be joy.

For me now, prayer is noticing that the neighbor’s forsythia is about to burst into bloom and laughing at my dog as he tears around in wild circles when I let him off his leash on our daily ramble up by the old cemetery. Prayer is boiling water and sugar for fresh hummingbird food, and refilling the finch sacks and the sunflower seeds for the birds a little, but more for the squirrels and the deer. It is picking daffodils and putting them by my kitchen sink in a little vase that was my mom’s favorite, that she had in her kitchen window. It is standing at that kitchen window in the morning with a cup of hot tea and saying thank you for the tea, thank you for the sun, thank you for the goldfinches and the doves that have started visiting my bird feeders.  And these “thank yous” aren’t conscious. They aren’t planned or spoken or part of a larger prayer plan that I have to work through. They are just moments. Split seconds of silence, of awareness, of gratitude.

At least that’s what I think now. I could be wrong.

My life has been a beautiful journey of discovering that I was  absolutely mistaken about things that I previously knew for sure.  So many of my certainties have morphed into questions. I’m OK with that.

For now, tonight? I am happy to sit in silence, to walk with the dog up the big hill, to feed the birds, to wash the fresh chard that somehow survived the winter and is thriving in my little plot at the community garden.  My college-aged daughter is here at the other end of the table, working on her homework.  The cat sits on the couch by my son.  I am here with them.  There is nowhere else to be. This is my prayer.