Teach us to pray...

I have a confession to make:

I have not had an easy time praying these past weeks. 

It's a confession difficult for a pastor to make because it feels a little like a failure. Praying is my job after all, right? Shouldn't this be second nature to me? I really wish that I could write a blog about prayer that started not with a confession, but with a recounting of a long conversation God and I had about all the decisions and difficulties in my life right now, and God spoke to me, and suddenly everything became very clear and I felt this abiding presence and my faith is strong as ever and God and I skipped happily into the sunset. 

But I can't.

And to be perfectly honest, I have never had that experience. I am so jealous of people who have encounters like this, but while my experience with prayer has been many things, it has never been quite like this. For me, prayer is work - at least prayer in the traditional, down on my knees beside my bed sense is. I was comforted about feeling this way when a Benedictine monk told me, regarding their five times daily prayer practice, that there is a reason these times of prayer are called the "daily office." It's like going to work, to the office! And if prayer is indeed work, then it certainly becomes clear why it has seemed difficult for me in these very intense weeks of decision-making, recovery, emotional stress, wedding planning, house-purchasing, preparing to move... I don't have anything left!

Still, I was troubled by my lack of ability to pray during this trying time in my life. At first it was because I was not very happy with God, and we weren't on speaking terms. Then I was just so tired. But these seem like lame excuses. I talked to my spiritual director about it and two things became clear. First, I thought about the different ways that I have tried to pray over the years, and one of the more successful ways was via a prayer journal. I have always been an avid journaler, and it occurred to me one day that I was telling my journal what one might tell God in prayer. So I started beginning my journal entries with "Dear God" and ending them with "Amen." For the first time in my life, I felt like I had a really engaging relationship with God. So in that way, I realized, this blog has served as a sort of prayer outlet for me. I often sit down to write a blog and have no idea what I'm going to say, and then by the end I have a full page of reflections. The revelations that might come from the prayer that I think I should be doing on my knees beside my bed are happening instead through writing this blog - as if the Spirit is speaking to me through my fingers on my keyboard. I almost always leave a blog with a deeper sense of peace than I started with, a result of sitting still, sometimes silently staring at a blinking curser on a blank screen, waiting for inspiration. Even that word, "inspiration," is spiritual: in-spirit-ion. Taking in the Spirit, the Breath. So in that way, I have been praying, and you all have been witnesses of it - indeed you've been a part of it. 

Which brings me to the next realization that happened in my conversation with my spiritual director: she suggested that we might think about prayer as relationship. Notice my previous comment that in my prayer journaling, I felt like I had an engaging relationship with God. Consider what you know about the most intimate and important relationships in your life: they require regular interaction and conversation; they require you to both listen and to speak (whatever form these activities take for your particular abilities or place in life), to be attentive and expressive; they bring happiness, but also discouragement at times; and, they are a lot of work. Now don't get me wrong - I adore Michael, my parents, my best friends, but all of these relationships have required a whole lot of work. Some of that work has been fun, some not so much. Especially when there are a lot of other stressors in life - I dare you to have a major surgery, buy a house, and plan a wedding with your significant other all at once and sail through it without ever being frustrated or discouraged with each other. Michael and I are very strong communicators, but that has been a bit much! But at the end of the day, my relationship with Michael is worth the effort. 

And my relationship with God is worth it, too. Even though it takes a lot of work. Even though it requires me to listen when I'd rather talk (which is, to be honest, a good amount of the time). Even though God makes me mad sometimes, and makes me want to say hurtful things that I don't really mean. Even though we go through dry spells from time to time. Relationships are work. Prayer is work. It's okay if you need a break for a little while. Just as long as, in the end, you remember: it is worth the effort.

In the midst of all this, of course, I've been thinking a lot about marriage, both my own upcoming marriage and the fact that I am presiding in six weddings in as many months (plus my two!), and working with all those couples in preparing them for their marriages. I read in a book recently that studies have shown that couples who pray together have more successful marriages and are happier in all of the various categories of marriage. Michael and I pray together, and I can totally see why this would be the case. Even as we speak to God together, the intimacy between us is at its very deepest. The first time Michael and I prayed aloud together - and almost every time since - I have cried some of my most honest tears. I have clung to Michael as I might cling to God if God were a physical being in my midst. My tears have wet Michael's T-shirt as they might wet God's T-shirt, if God were the T-shirt-wearing type. 

Praying together in this fashion is beautiful, so beautiful. Whether it is aloud, or silently together, or sitting in intentional silence together, or naming thanksgivings together over dinner, or painting, or making music, or blogging (in which I am praying with all of you!), or even shouting my frustration, or any number of other ways to pray, I am grateful for the opportunity to grow through prayer, through relationship. Thank you to all of you. Thank you, God.