This is a post in a series of guest posts about unexpected spiritual experiences. Here’s a link to the guest post invitation. Here’s a link to the archive for this series.
Earlier this week I went for a run along a woodsy trail while listening to the talk given by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich at the Boston Mormon Stories Conference. Hearing her eloquent, deeply informed, faithful narrative while my body moved in repetitive motion between towering green Texas pine trees struck a chord in me that hadn’t been played in at least two years. For the first time in what felt like ages I looked heavenward with possibility, considering (again) that maybe there was a God up there that might answer me back. I even paused mid stride in true twenty-first century fashion, and took a picture of the parting trees and the blue morning sky with my iPhone. In all seriousness a flame of hope did glimmer for me again that morning, however subtly.
Four years ago, after my husband announced to me that he was an atheist, I went through two years of praying with hope that a God was there listening and that He had answers, a plan and a deep personal love for me. With every passing day that turned up answerless that flame of hope grew more and more dim. It was as if every time I knelt or laid in my bed or drove in my car or prayed over that day’s batch of chopped onions or curled up on the floor in my closet, I ripped out my heart and held it out for Him to heal. Nothing. During the last year of this tender time I prayed with caution, my prayers grew less and less frequent and eventually they stopped. I put so much faith into every prayer and I needed my Heavenly Father so intensely. Surely, if He were personal, He knew that. When the answers didn’t come I had to quit hoping just to cope. A very large part of me was dying inside. It was just too darn painful. Several months later the praying picked up again but I feel like it’s been an act ever since. I pray because I’m supposed to and because it sounds so beautiful to me when I hear people like Joanna Brooks say things like “Prayer has always been important to me” or, “I never stopped praying.” To that I always respond silently, “Why can’t I say that?”
I’ve never really stopped believing in God. For a while, I doubted, but that doubt has rolled over into a belief in some kind of vague, agnostic-ish, divinity that is aware of infinitely more than any of us can comprehend. And I call that God. I have a healthy spiritual life that has brought me more in touch with my inner self in amazing ways, but I’d love it if my God were personal. I’d love it if this Divinity spoke to me from the outside. But I don’t hope for it or expect it because I’ve been where that takes me. It’s just not safe.
I never realized how safe I had been playing it until the day I spent my morning run with Sister Ulrich. Before climbing between the sheets that night I decided to kneel in prayer. I was alone in my room. The time felt right and I moved sacredly, with purpose. It was as I bowed my head that the panic came so unexpectedly. My heart recognized the hope I was nursing again, it’s old torturer from two years ago, and anxiety seized me. My act of kneeling had felt so innocuous when I started and yet there they were, my old demons, that I hadn’t even known existed.
I am afraid to pray.
I muttered through something short and probably trivial. To tell you the truth I don’t recall if I even went through with a prayer that night. I only know that I wasn’t strong enough to let the lamplight keep glowing, tiny as it was. I snuffed it out. As I lay in bed I couldn’t stop thinking about my reaction to hope in a personal God. Had I already forgotten how painful that time was? How I hadn’t been strong enough to keep it up? No, it turns out, I haven’t forgotten. The wounds are there, but hopefully (there I go again) they are healing. Hopefully (again), in time I will be strong enough. Are you afraid to pray?
–Ashley Merback (other guest posts can be viewed here)
[Last post in this series: Knock, Knock, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door]
This really resonates with me. About a year ago I wrote something very similar and still I do not pray. Well I can pray for others in dire need, the people of Haiti, a friend in an abusive relationship, another friend fighting cancer, those I pray for and feel a spiritual connection and have a firm belief that my prayer is heard and measured in the grand scheme of things. Yet to pray for myself I feel the doors of heaven remain firmly shut for I like the OP fear that the shattering of my soul to learn that my hope for a God who loves and cares for me personally is completely in vain would break me beyond repair.
I’m not afraid to pray; most of my prayers are answered positively. However, I went through a time after my son’s suicide that my prayers were shouts of anger and derision. I was so mad at God. Then I went OCD and had to do it right or I didn’t believe they’d be answered. A certain process. Now, I pray however and whenever the need arises. The biggest problem I”m having is pure old dee laziness. Once I get down on my knees (and I don’t believe this is the only way to pray, but I do believe in daily formal prayer), I’m okay, I can pour out my heart. That two second act, I’ve been whiny about lately.
I could have written a lot of your post myself. And right now I am very afraid to pray, of loosing the fragile hope I have that there is a God who listens and who cares. Instead I just think about praying a lot, but don’t actually do it. =(
I am happy to have your responses! Maybe it’s a phase for me (us;). I really think that I just have to accept some things about prayer, about the connection in the moment rather than the answers or the tangible comfort afterward that I expected as a child and a teen. That’s what I’m doing now. So maybe afraid to pray isn’t the right words because I’m not afraid to prayer, necessarily, I do it almost daily, but rather I am afraid to hope for an answer from God in the same way that I used to.
As another person unable to hear God’s voice when I pray, I have come to believe that the feeling you felt while running WAS God. I don’t know if it is just my coping mechanism, but since I can’t find God in the “traditional” way, I believe that overwhelming moments of joy, peace, hope, or love are the way I can still feel God loving me. I feel these mostly when I am in nature… And it is the only thing that keeps me from feeling completely cut off from God.
Your story is touching.
You asked for our experiences.
Every time I pray or read the scriptures, my day goes to hell in a handbasket.
Don’t know if I am setting the bar a little too high.
It isn’t the “learn patience by being patient” kind of troubles that occur.
Made me a bit reticent (sp?) to say prayers and read scriptures.
I wanted to be like the people that stood and bore testimony that “My day always goes well if I start it out right with Prayer and Study” but alas twas not to be.
Now I read when I feel the need, I pray when I feel the prompting (thankfulness, help, inspiration, grit) and don’t worry about the rest.