“I like the way you pray.”
I’ll be honest, that just made me really insecure. This was the second time I had heard this. Both times I wondered nervously, When did they hear me pray? Praying publicly isn’t something I do often and, while this is something I’d like to change, I struggle being comfortable with it.
I guess I should explain. As an example, when you’re alone with your closest friend or loved one, there’s an intimacy and candor that flows naturally. Conversations evolves and change and there is deep communication and emotion that is conveyed which goes so much deeper than simply the spoken words. This is how I pray. There is brutal honesty and unashamed dialogue. I hold back nothing. I don’t have that level of communication with anyone and I doubt my friends or family would think very highly of me if they were listening in. God knows the ugliest parts of me already and I expose everything to him. It’s the only way he can shine his grace on me and expose the areas of brokenness.
Now introduce a stranger into the mix. This may still be a close friend, but in the context of my personal relationship with God, they are utterly an outsider. They don’t really know you. They only know what I let them see. God knows and sees it all. Praying in public means bringing in others into that most deeply intimate relationship and exposing myself to their judgment. I weep before God often because he wants my broken heart, but weeping and bumbling in front of someone else? Won’t I just annoy them? I’ve been in a few church services where people prayed for a good ten minutes and I couldn’t understand a word from their shaking lips, running nose, and tear stained faces. For the first few minutes I was sympathetic, but as the minutes dragged on and their voices squeaked and bubbled unintelligibly, I couldn’t help buy look at the clock and wonder how long we’d be there. As one who has shamefully judged another, I don’t want to be judged.
Or what if I get lost in thought? It happens often when I pray. Right in the middle of a sentence I lose track of my words and sit there silently, unable to continue. It’s like I don’t even know how to construct simple sentences. I trip over my self and struggle with describing the things I will to say. To alleviate that, I sometimes find myself rehearsing my sentences a few minutes in advance. It’s almost a natural reaction to knowing I’m going to pray. But how is that authentic? Would I rehearse any other conversation? Of course not.
Paying with others is difficult for me because I see God as someone so close, so personal, that prayers often feel uncomfortable and forced when shared. And I just can’t pray that way anymore. My prayers are ugly, messy, filled with heartache, and sometimes sprinkled with the occasion curse word as I come stubbornly to terms with God’s will.
And maybe that’s why those two people said that to me. They’ve heard me pray the prayers as I wept before my King and my daddy begging him to pull me from the bottom. Maybe they saw someone who is screwed up. They’re broken people that find themselves in the midst of another broken person who doesn’t have it any more together than they do. And there’s a strange comfort in the midst of fellow hurting.
Dad… take my broken prayers and mumbled words and use them. Hold my brother and my sister and show them the gentle loving father that I see. Fight for them as you’ve fought for me. Sit with them as you’ve sat with me. You find such joy in rescuing us for our brokenness. We wait for you. Rescue us.