Praying Like a Big Girl

Who’s watching The Chosen? Yes, I see those hands. The rest of you need to get with it: this is an awesome show. I’m on my third viewing of each episode – one time on my own, another with my daughters, another with my guy. And of course, I notice more details each time.

Right now, I’m particularly paying attention to the prayers the Jewish characters say. Like, there’s a scene where Jesus, James, and John are sleeping in the same room, and they all close their eyes and say the same prayer before they get out of bed. Not in unison, like drones, but it is the same prayer, so it must be a prescribed formulaic thing. One of those rituals Baptists hate.

I grew up Southern Baptist, so I had definite ideas of how prayers were supposed to go, when they were supposed to happen, what they were supposed to sound like. But then that’s how it is for everyone, right? We pray the prayers we hear – at least at first. That seems right and righteous and good. If someone had told me in high school that I needed to learn how to pray, I probably would have been offended.

Not that there was anything wrong with my Southern Baptist high-school prayers. But over the years, I was exposed to other kinds of prayer . . . and learned the value of other “prayer languages”.

Someone once gave me a copy of Ruth Myers’ 31 Days of Praise, my first experience of reading pre-written prayers. Loved that far more than I dreamed I could have. I still get that out every once in a while and spend a month in those pages.

I’ve had prayer warrior friends over the years who would stop almost mid-sentence and look up and just start talking to God about the thing we were just discussing . . . as if he were in the room there with us, participating in the conversation. Which, of course, he was; I just wasn’t conscious of it before. This deeply changed my spiritual walk.

While at a four-week seminar in Ohio one summer, I walked each Sunday to church services at an Episcopal church, my first exposure to liturgy and General Intercessions. “Lord, hear our prayer . . .” I was profoundly moved by this – the idea that there were people all over the world praying these exact same words with me.

I took a class at my church in NJ where the facilitator guided us through the Lord’s Prayer each week, but kind of interactively: “Our Father . . . Lord, thank you for being my father! Thank you for making me your child! . . . who art in heaven . . . but you’re here on earth with me, too . . . Lord, help me always feel you here with me and believe you are, even when I don’t feel you . . .” Again, changed my life. I frequently pray through scripture this way now.

Several years ago, I got to write a study guide for Jen Hatmaker’s book Seven. The last chapter of that book focused on Praying the Hours, another liturgical practice. I was intrigued and tried that for a while. It was pretty meaningful to me for a time, but it eventually just became an item on the to-do list. Eh. Different strokes . . .

At my current church, the prayers said during services are usually written ahead of time and read. At most churches I’ve attended, prayers said during services were spontaneous but were often filled with churchy language that seemed more meant for show than for communication. I remember a Sunday service in my childhood when a well-respected deacon in our church (also a well-respected businessman in the community) stopped himself short in the middle of his congregational prayer at the pulpit and humbly asked God to forgive him for the way he had spoken to an employee earlier in the week – he couldn’t bring himself to continue until he got that cleared up with the Lord.

My guy and I were talking recently about the biblical admonition to “pray without ceasing”; he said he imagines that being like how the cops in TV shows have a little wireless thing in their ears so they can be in constant, instant communication with headquarters. And yeah – that’s the kind of prayer I’ve needed in the last few years.

Prayer is a conversation -- a connective exchange (sometimes verbal) with a person with whom we have a relationship. And as the relationship grows and changes, so do our prayers. I occasionally wonder if I talk too casually to God now. I’m sure I have friends who, if they heard the conversations he and I are having in my head, would chastise me for joking and griping and gossiping with the Almighty Lord of the Universe like he's my BFF. But you know, that’s where he and I are today. I have other moments when I am awestruck by his majesty and greatness . . . and then I speak to him differently. And I'm joyfully realizing that this glorious Creator is the same God that put up with the attitude I copped with him last week and laughed with me a stupid joke I made this morning and cried at my heartache last summer.

There was a particularly horrible week of my life many years ago when I got up every morning, looked up, and literally said to God, “ I am NOT talking to you today!!!” But that, too, was prayer -- that week of silent pouting. It reflected the state of our relationship in that season: I was PISSED and needed some space and time . . . but deep down I knew I’d be back. To paraphrase Peter, who else am I going to go to? He is it. He’s all there is, all I’ve got.

I was asked at a graduation event this spring to write some words of advice for the graduate. I told her, “Keep talking to God. Always. Even when you’re pissed. He’s a big boy – he can take it. Never stop talking to God.”