Prayer is Bloody Hard

Is it worth it?

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Dear ones, a quick note:

I want to be super transparent here: starting in February, all posts are going to be “paid-only.”* That means that you’ll need to be a paid subscriber in order to read them in their entirety. It costs $5/month or $50/year to do that (or if you’re feeling super groovy and want to be a Founding member, $200/year), but I want you to know that if that’s an obstacle to your being able to continue being here at The Second Cup, you can send me an email and I’ll simply give you a free “paid” membership—not a single question asked, and no need to explain. I want you here.

I’m making this change because I spend one full day each week writing for The Second Cup. This is my effort to sustain this work and be able to offer it for a very long while. It is truly what I love to do best—being here in community with you.

Thank you for showing up, week after week, and to everyone who is already a paid subscriber—you rock.

*The rest of January’s posts will be free, and all podcast episodes will remain free to anyone, too.

This is the year I’ll be learning to pray.

Now I know that prayer doesn’t sound sexy. I KNOW. It’s not instant and flashy like the screens we love; it’s a slow and intentional discipline that forces us to quiet ourselves like a glass of still water, sitting untouched on a table. It requires space and time—and more than a little tenacity. Oh, and courage. It takes a lot of that, too.

I think when most of us hear the word ‘prayer,’ we picture eyes closed, heads bowed, and rote iterations that feel more obligatory than earth-moving. Our minds immediately skitter to more pressing matters: Did I remember to buy cream of chicken? How many hours has it been since the dog went out? Will anyone notice if I unbutton my pants? Prayer is a thing we know we should do, but if we’re honest, it’s not something we particularly want to do, because it feels either:

a.) too hard,

b.) too boring, or

c.) too ineffective

But lately, I’ve begun to sense how vital it is. I’m talking more-important-than-my-morning-coffee vital. As in, I-cannot-bear-the-weight-of-this-world-without-it vital. An inner shift is starting to happen—perhaps the sleeping ancient-eternal part of me is rousing, and she’s dismally unimpressed with the paltry offerings this world keeps trying to hand her.

[I feel a moral duty to resist using cliches to talk about prayer here—they fail to illuminate the true essence of what’s available to us, quivering at the end of our own fingertips. And I think our tolerance for uninventive language is (at least in part) what got us into this prayer pickle in the first place.]

I’ve had so many questions and concerns around prayer the last couple of years. So much has happened that I have not understood. So much has not happened that I’ve wanted so badly. There have been more than a few times when I’ve (not always politely) asked:

• If God knows best and his will is going to be done regardless—why on earth should I bother getting involved?

• Why does Jesus say that if we have a teensy bit of a faith we can make mountains move, but when I apply my teensy bit of faith, the mountains stand still, the cancer grows, the horrible happens?

• Who do we pray to? God? Jesus? The Holy Spirit? All of the above?

• Why is prayer so bloody hard?

This isn’t a post where I answer all of those questions, though I have been doing some deeper reading on these topics, and some level of understanding is beginning to dawn on me. What a relief, that we can read the words of men and women who’ve sat in God’s presence and have come back to tell us about it.¹

But no. This is the kind of post where I try to do the impossible work of using two dimensions to explain what it’s been like learning to experience God—even with my meager faith, my squirrely brain, my nearsighted eyes, and my humany humanness. Because that’s what true prayer is: experiencing God. And if we can wrap our heads around the fact that we can, at any moment of any day, have access to GOD, and not only that, but get closer and closer with him and swim in the eternally deep sea of his presence, maybe then we can put our grocery lists and phones aside and do the thing. Maybe we just need a little win to remind us that praying is absolutely worth the discomfort, uncertainty, and boredom that we might experience on the way to knowing God more.

Can you believe with me for a minute? If you haven’t experienced this before, or it’s been a long time, I know it’s hard to get there. But suspend your disbelief—hand it over to me. I’ve sat in God’s presence, however imperfectly, and I’m coming back to tell you what it can be like.

Prayer is like:

• The constant vibrations of the world (both around and within you) turning from liquid to slush, from slush to solid matter. It becomes a pleasant heaviness that rests on your sternum, like a mother’s hand on a baby’s chest at night.

• A whipping back and forth, where Spirit and Word and Truth breeze through your inner cavity, shooting your ribcage through with the essence of otherworldly goodness.

• That leap of relief you get in your gut when you’re starving, but then the waitress drops a basket of warm bread on the table.

• Being in a world with a fuller spectrum of colors—when you open your eyes to see your own couch or backyard or office again, everything seems suddenly sepia, like our Earth is just an old western film.

• Lips and head to the warm spot between God’s cheek and ear.

You might be wondering, “How? That sounds great, but how can I get there?”

I’m no guru, but I’d say to just start doing it. To let yourself believe that you’ll be rewarded handily for coming to God, and that the reward will be God himself. To ask the Holy Spirit to make you want to pray. To ask Jesus to reach one hand down to yours, the other up to God, and to join you two together in ways you’ve never even dreamed up yet.

It may not happen immediately. It might take some of that tenacity we were talking about. But hang in there until you get a little tiny taste of God IRL—after that, I’m convinced you’ll have the motivation you need to keep praying.

Parting shot: This week I learned an interesting exercise for prayer in the aptly named book, Prayer, by Tim Keller. It involves reciting the Lord’s Prayer, but meditating on and personalizing each section as you go. In doing so, you take the structure and heart of the prayer Jesus taught us, and then engage with it in intentional ways.

I’ve found it to be helpful in centering my prayers, keeping my mind from scampering elsewhere, and tethering me to meaningful conversation with the Lord. And of course, I couldn’t help but turn it into a poem. I’ve shared it with you below—this first draft that’s been formulating in my journal the last week or so.

The Lord’s Prayer

Our Father, who art in Heaven,

Let me get real comfortable
with Heaven—
so much so that 
when I close my eyes or
hear its name
I smile, as someone 
thinking of their childhood treehouse or
vacation home in Maine, knowing
it's existing somewhere right this moment
even if it's not where I am
and that it's every bit as real
as this here bedside table
and these soft striped sheets

and let me see the God—
who should bring me 
to my shins
as if I were dead—
existing there in the Heavens, too,
letting me call him Dad 
and scamper to kiss
his jaw [what does it smell like, 
there on the smooth by his ear?]

hallowed be thy name.

I'll turn to the angels
and, this time, 
won't find them dull
for spending eternity 
singing, "Holy!"
for every iteration of the word
will be so pregnant with 
novelty that I 
could fall into those two syllables
and never venture
back into the spoken word.

Thy kingdom come,

And as I sit on his knees
[because he didn't let me
stay on mine],
together
we'll look out across
the tumbling world and the 
bumbling ones we call beloved
and this God-place will feel
like the real one
[thank the Lord this nightmare
we call reality
is the one which will someday
melt away].

thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. 

I beg him to flip the universe
and bring the day when reason
will take the backseat to wonder, 
when surrender 
will not be a dirty word but
a sublime relief.

Give us this day our daily bread

Until then, God, will you give me enough
to not be poor and not be rich?

Enough that I wouldn't have to
walk on my knees
and scrabble through this world,
but also not more than this 
tender-arrogant heart can handle. 
Heaven forbid I begin to puff up and
beat my own chest, mistaking myself
for the sun and the stars, and for God
and the whole universe, too

[because, simply stated—I will].

and forgive us our debts

I might as well come clean here, I'll say:

I need you to post my bail. I know I 
just asked yesterday and that
I said I'd be better
but I stepped from your lap and the world
just about swallowed me up whole
and I got lost in the inertia of it all

as we forgive our debtors.

God puts his giant palm
across my eyes and I can read
the fine white scars
of the names tattooed there
of the ones I have relished
hating. And I—I am butter on a 
hot sidewalk. 
I hold onto nothing, I liquify.

Lead us not into temptation 

And while I'm puddled there, I remember
how much I like to sin
and the muscles of my chest
knot and twist
protecting my heart from 
leaping beyond her ribs
and into the pleasures that crumble
like ash on the tongue—
gray and dry and poison:
a guise

but deliver us from evil

I cannot splay my body
across everyone I'd like to protect
I'm an ant
drifting on the Milky Way
but I see how God's arms
span lightyears even as
they scoop me up
and so I whisper, 
"You're bigger," into that ear
[unfathomably]
attuned to my 
groans.

for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever.

I stand up, wipe the splendor from my 
jeans. My eyes see the distant
sepia tones of Earth, fallen Earth
and I return
but color blooms
in my guts 
and I'll hold a bit of Eden 
wherever I go. 

Amen. 

How can I say, The end? 
When I should like
to continue in your presence
forever? 

—Deidre Braley

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What does prayer (and, in turn, experiencing God) feel like to you? Tell me in an email or comment below. I’d love to hear.

1. In last week’s post, I mentioned that I read A.W. Tozer’s Pursuit of God. I cannot recommend it enough. Tozer is a straight shooter and he’ll shoot ya straight in the heart and mind with a shot of truth you won’t be able to ignore. If you’re into that sort of thing—grab a copy and buckle up. I feel nearly certain it will change the way you think. Another teacher I’m learning from is Tim Keller. I’m reading his simply-titled book, Prayer, right now.