On My Prayer Life

Prayer has always been difficult for me as an adult. As a child, I recall having a sense of constant communication with God. But as I grew older, sprouting into my pre-teens and early teenage years, I lost that sense of communion and while I didn’t stop having belief in God, my view of God as my Heavenly Father had been replaced with my personal Cosmic Santa Clause. More recently, I’ve been struggling to return to pursuing that childhood relationship with God through genuine prayer. Truly, a struggle.

As a child, I knew prayer as having heart-felt conversations with God. I have memories of me in my early elementary school years talking to God in my mind and out-loud, confident in God’s love for my family and for little me. I recall calling out to God whenever feeling sad or whenever I sensed my parents in a disagreement. I remember praying to God for my family and their needs. I knew God as my Heavenly Father and I recollect that with this relationship came a sense of sweetness, probably innocence, that I wish I could relive now as an adult.  

 Looking back, I realize that it was during my teenage years that prayer for me became a habit of begging God for favors. Prayer went from being a real relationship with God to being more about using God to give me what I wanted for my own benefit (after all, God is good and, since He is good, He will give me what I want so that I can be happy). Honestly, typical but not a fulfilling attitude towards prayer and towards God.

I knew that prayer was essential in the life of the Christian. Because, come on, how else would God know to make my 8^th grade crush like me? How else would I become part of the in-crowd in high school? How else would God teach that stuck-up long-haired heathen a lesson for humiliating 19-year-old me? “Ask and it shall be given you…” (face-palm). Clearly, prayer was an essential in my life because I was in constant need of a miracle (which never happened; the kind I wanted, anyway)…

Ironically, aside from my pleas for miracle-self-glamorization, my prayer life was actually pretty defunct.  Sure, I went to church every Wednesday and Sunday but prayer for me was my least favorite activity and it felt like a chore. I especially loathed (regrettably) our prayer services. People would take turns to pray for a really long (and agonizing) period of time and would mutter “Oh Señor” 50, 80, or more times before saying Amen (I would make it a game to count how many times “Oh, Señor” was said). In turn, I liked my prayers short and sweet: “Thank you God for tra-la-la and thank you for so-and-so. Please make all my dreams come true. If you do, I promise I’ll be really good and serve you for the rest of my life. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen” (Not exactly word for word, but that was definitely the attitude). In essence, my understanding of prayer was more about giving God a to-do-list than it was asking God to fill me and to guide me to do His Will.

So, what’s different now? Honestly, not much. I still struggle with prayer and I still struggle with not treating God as my Cosmic Santa Clause rather than praying to Him as my Heavenly Father and King. Nevertheless, I do believe that I am slowly learning what it means to really pray and find that fulfillment that only God can give and not in those things I used to pray for every day. But when I say “slowly”, I really mean slowly.

God in His mercy.

 “Why do you increase your bonds? Take hold of your life before your light grows dark and you seek help and do not find it. This life has been given to you for repentance; do not waste it in vain pursuits”.
-          St. Isaac the Syrian