Breathing Eden: Conversations With GodНамуна

Prayer Circles and Wringing Hands

God, let's do this quickly. You know I’m uncomfortable praying. I struggle to find the right words when I’m talking to you. I second-guess each word I say. I hear how you’re safe. I read how you love me just how I am. But I can’t help comparing myself to my friends as they pray aloud.

I feel like a child stumbling over my words, nervous that my simple prayers don’t convey enough depth, at least not the depth of love my friends seem to feel towards you. Oh, they share such beautiful prayers aloud to you! Do you know I love you too? Are my simple prayers, the ones in my head, getting through?

If you are safe, why do I struggle to talk to you? I have trouble believing there is not a certain right way to pray. Could it be true that some people can hear you better than I can? The women in my Bible study group talk to you like you are right there, in the room, listening. They act like they can tell you anything. They confess their fears, their regrets, their desperate need for your peace and joy and help. But me? I guess I struggle, still, with thinking of you as a person, as a friend.

I feel pretty alone here, even in this group of friends. Can you hear my heart speak these words to you now? I can’t say this out loud, but…

I don’t know what I’m doing.

YOU DID IT just now, you know. You prayed. Praying is talking to me. And this? What we’re doing here? This is a relationship blooming–because this here is a conversation. You don’t need to worry about what to say to me or how to say it. You don’t need to worry about fitting in or measuring up in any prayer group or women’s Bible study.

You don’t know what you’re doing, but I do, and I love it. Keep it up.

You don’t need to think about what it’s supposed to look like to love me. How the world sees is not how I see. And what I see is a bold and tender warrior woman who loves and does not hesitate to do the hard thing when it counts.

Don’t doubt how I’ve made you. But look to what I’m doing in you.

Isn’t prayer about communicating your heart to me? And in prayer, your heart aligned with mine, you worship. Prayer is not about words anyway. It is conversing with me with more than speech—your mind turned to me as you prepare your presentation at work; your listening for me as you serve, expecting me as you rest, looking for me as you walk, finding me as you dream. I love the different ways I have made my daughters and sons to speak to me—with their hearts, their hands, their mouths, their souls and spirits united with me. I give you your own language, not just in words, to speak to me. Be bold, daughter. Claim how I’ve made you to pray. I have more to show you. I have more of my presence to give you. I want you to claim it. I want you to know it.

Come on now, girl. The two of us together?

We’ve got this.

Pray:

Father, you have made me perfectly, and I am designed to communicate with you. Teach me more of who you are and the language you have given me to speak to you. I want to know our language, the way you have made me to engage with you and know you. I surrender to you my fear of what others think. Let me talk to you freely, knowing that when I am in your presence I am safe. I trust your words are in my heart, and you are in me. Amen.