In Fear, What To Pray?
In the past few months I’ve been in several situations where friends or family have faced life threatening illness. Some have passed away. Some have lived. Perhaps you have faced those situations recently too.
In those moments, I’ve found it hard to know how to pray. To be honest, I’ve just found it hard to hope, let alone pray. I’ve felt resigned, at times, to an impending loss and have not known how to lift up my soul to God in prayer.
What do we do in times like this? How do we pray when we face significant loss? For my part, I’m still learning. But here is some of what I’m learning:
First, the fact that I feel stuck, paralyzed almost, is actually an indicator that I’ve already started to enter into some grief. It is a reflection of a loss that’s already occurred — not just one I anticipate. It’s a reflection of the loss of a sense of stability and confidence in having that person around, without fear that they may soon be gone.
My world, even if only in a small way, has been destabilized.
Whether I recognize it in the moment or not, that destabilizing, that paralysis in prayer, reveals that some of my hope has been damaged just by receiving the news. So I have less hope and spiritual balance to work with than I normally would. To put it another way, I have fewer resources for more work.
It’s no wonder I feel off.
Yet I usually can’t recognize that I’m already in a mild state of grief and I struggle to figure out why I can’t feel more hope or pray without a sense of resignation. I’m praying with a wounded soul and wondering why I can’t pray like I’m totally healthy.
What can I do?
I can acknowledge my wounds to the Healer — to God. I can talk to him not just about them, but about me too. I can set us both in his hands and ask for help.
But that may feel awkward to us, or even wrong. “How can I pray for myself or focus on myself at all at a time like this?” It feels like what I should do is figure out how to pray for them or how to make myself hope and pray for them with greater strength and resolve. What feels more comfortable, more right, is the idea that I need to do something. Which is a very natural response to a fear of loss. Though possibly not the response that will truly help me or them.
This gets me to the second thing I’m learning: perhaps, I don’t need to do something when I’m stuck in this way. Perhaps what I need to do is be with someone — with God.
If the source of my fear — my grief, my prayer paralysis — is the threat of the loss of a relationship, it makes sense that what I most need in response to that fear, grief and paralysis is relationship. I’m not fearing the loss of having the right mindset or right understanding of God’s will. I’m fearing the loss of connection. I need a remedy that fits the wound.
What I need is not to figure something out about God’s plan, his will or my heart, but to be near God’s heart. To hear it beat in love for me and for them. The instability I feel is not just an indicator that something is already off. It’s also an invitation to climb up into God’s arms and ask him to hold me for a little while — and to hold them.
In those times when I don’t know how to pray, what I can do is simply acknowledge to God what I’m feeling. I can just say, “God, I don’t know what to do right now.” And then I can ask him for what I’m missing — connection. “Would you be near me? Would you be near them?”
I don’t have to know how to rouse myself to greater hope or greater trust, as if I weren’t already praying with a limp. I can just be near God in my uncertainty. Because I don’t know what he will do. But I do know he’ll go with me. “It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” - Deuteronomy 31:8.
Give your soul the remedy it needs for the loss it fears. Give it connection. Give it God.