I Pray Wrong

And my dear, task-oriented readers — you might too

Prayer mostly exhausts me.

It’s something I have to gear myself up for. Like putting away the laundry on the coffee table or generating a third bedtime story, I have to do some serious self-talk to get myself ready to pray.

“Come on, Deidre,” I say out loud to myself. “Just do it. You’ve got this.” I might as well be stretching my quads and starring in a Nike commercial, the way I warm up for my talks with the Lord.

I recognize that this *may* not be the healthiest approach toward prayer. Prayer, after all, is powerful stuff. Good stuff. Important stuff. Maybe even the most important stuff, if we were to ask God. After all, he says he desires our faithful love and not our sacrifice, and that he wants us to know him more than he wants our burnt offerings.¹

In other words — he wants us to want to be with him. He doesn’t want our material objects or our achievements. He just wants us to love him back.

That sounds lovely. And easy. And, honestly, quite refreshing. So why, oh why, am I like this? Why do I have to pump myself full of motivational mojo just to sit and talk with him?

I’ve been reflecting on this for quite some time now, wondering what my big deal with prayer is and why it’s always been so hard for me.

Finally, it hit me all once: I’ve been praying wrong for the last thirty years.

Let me explain. When I do get myself amped up to talk with God, this is how the conversation usually goes: