That awful struggle to pray
It doesn’t happen often, but every now and again I’ll read a blog post that powerfully resonates with me and so perfectly articulates where I’m at; it stuns me.
Ben Myers has just achieved this in his blog post entitled: The year without prayer:
And then there was the year without prayer. Or was it two years? Three? Or five? I guess I lost count. Anyway, all that time I could not pray.
Don’t ask me why, don’t ask me to explain it. It’s not that I stopped believing: not exactly. It’s just that everything around me was a terrible silence, and any word, a shout or just a whisper, would only make the silence echo louder. It’s not that I had stopped loving: not completely. It’s just that my heart was cracked inside me, and all the words seemed stillborn, choked by sadness before they ever could get out. It’s not that I stopped trying: not quite. It’s just that I tried to pray instead of praying. It is the difference between trying to swim and swimming, between trying to remember someone’s name and remembering. You might come close, but in the end it makes no difference. In the end it is not a matter of degrees.
Sometimes my wanting to pray came so close to the actual thing that I could almost feel it. Sometimes I was thrilled by the feeling of almost praying, just as a child in water, limbs thrashing, thrills at the feeling that swimming might really be possible after all, then sinks.
Tags: Christian Life
July 19th, 2012 at 3:56 am
I went through a time like that and it was horrible, but God is still with you in your suffering. I actually felt guilty because I could not pray…but I know now that it was not right to feel guilty. When it is due to inability on our part, it is the suffering Christ in us.
July 19th, 2012 at 4:59 am
Thank you for directing me to this inspiring article/blog.