Thoughts and Prayers
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We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.
-Bible, Book Romans chapter 8
Having hung around churches most my life I’ve seen some people who could have gotten their PhD in praying. From bold Pentecostals commanding illness to leave the body, to sweet old priests reciting well worn liturgies, I’ve seen a large spectrum of people praying. And when done in love, I appreciate all the many flavors of prayer seen around the world.
I am but a single tile on this huge mural called humanity, so my experience is a miniscule piece of the whole. But I’ve never been very good at praying. The pressure to pray before a meal or at the conclusion of a church meeting sends me into an existential panic.
Prayer can feel like leaving an impromptu voicemail for God – “Hey it’s Drew, thanks for this delicious meal and the people I’m sharing it with, go ahead and give me a call back when you get this… otherwise I’ll just see you Sunday.”
Other times, I perceive my own and other people’s prayers as the spiritual equivalent of the Wendy’s drive thru. We pull up in our minivans, God speaks to us through that squeaky, difficult to hear voice box. We place our order: one double blessing with a side of health, a hedge of protection for the kids, and a happy meal for the wife. He tells us to drive around to the first window. We pay, we grab the bags and drive off. When we get home, we’ll see whether he screwed up our order or not.
But really a prayer is something intimate: a communication between your soul and a mysterious being who is closer than the air you breathe. God’s presence is deeply felt and innately recognized – like an infant in the womb who knows their mother’s voice without seeing her face. But that recognition is often lost under a mountain of religious expectations and thoughts of what the prayer experience should look like.
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Last week, an event happened that should have triggered a cascade of prayer activity from me. I found a lump on my son’s neck right at the spot where his shunt drains cerebral spinal fluid from his brain. We contacted the doctor who sent us for an X-ray. The results came back quickly, and they told us to go immediately to the ER. The tubing in the shunt had broken, draining fluid directly into his neck. He was taken in and within an hour taken for emergency surgery.
Life comes at you fast. One minute you’re in the backyard teaching him to play baseball, several short moments later you’re standing in pre-op trying to be calm for his sake.
The surgery went well and he’s bouncing back quickly. The storm has passed, the crisis is over. He even bragged to the surgeon about how much ice cream he was going to eat after the operation was over.
However, I found the experience absolutely terrifying, not dissimilar to being pushed out the door of an airplane. The pain of seeing your child in distress and the uncertainty about what was happening, pulls back the illusion that we are in control of our lives and the events around us.
People were texting me the whole day, sending all iterations of holy rites: thoughts, prayers, “good vibes”, well wishes, declarations of health. People wanted to let us know that prayer was being given on our behalf.
Interestingly, through the entire two days we were in the hospital it never once occurred to me to pray.
I didn’t pray out loud, or recite a Psalm, verse, or liturgy. I didn’t have the mental or physical reserves to do centering prayer. I’m pretty sure I didn’t stop and become aware of God’s presence in the moment. There was no deep breathing, no clever mindfulness app being used. I didn’t even request they bring the chaplain by to pinch hit for us.
Many people were praying, but nothing was further from my mind. Perhaps I failed some cosmic test?
Instead my body, mind, and soul were totally consumed with this one thought – I love my son.
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A parent’s greatest fear is losing their child.
I am aware that many of the major characters in the Bible lost their children: Adam and Eve, David and Bathsheba, Mary and Joseph, the parents of Moses. They were intimately familiar with that pain that hurts worse than anything known to man. Their greatest fears came to a horrible fruition.
Many times, prayer is rooted in anxiety. We need to say something out loud to reassure ourselves that it’s all going to be ok. Or we want a comfortable tradition to give us a feeling of structure, something to hold back the seemingly arbitrary nature of life.
But God is not a slot machine or a lucky charm. There’s an actual being at the end of that string and can. I believe somehow God shared my emotions as I waited in that hospital room. Surely, he is adamantly against sickness and death because at one time he knew the pain of losing his only son.
The most iconic verse in the Bible, John 3:16, is a reminder of this
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…
Prayer is a mystery to us. It a conversation back and forth. So in that sense I was praying that day in the only way I knew how.
At times when we are overwhelmed by our fear and sadness, a backup system within our souls kicks on to pray on our behalf. Rather than stringing together eloquent lines or expressing sensible needs, it deeply communicates to the creator in wordless groans.*
It is not cognitive, and it is not logical. It is deep crying out to deep, spirit conversing with spirit.
My soul cries out “I love my son”
and a voice whispers back “I do too.”
*Romans 8: 26-27
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.