Don't Be Afraid to Pray Abstractly
God can fill in the blanks.
In many church sermons I’ve attended throughout my life I’ve been encouraged to pray specifically. To ask God for exactly what I want so that I might see it fulfilled.
And while I don’t necessarily disagree with this, I don’t always have specific prayers.
Sometimes I don’t have any words, I just have feelings. Big, overwhelming, overpowering, unavoidable feelings that I can’t see my way around or wiggle my way out from under. I have feelings that hold me hostage and make me feel like there is no solution to the problem in front of me, or even feelings I can’t quite identify. Feelings that are just heavy and hard to hold.
When I pray, I often type out my prayers in a Word document. For me, that is the easiest way to get all of my thoughts out without getting distracted. Praying aloud is nearly impossible for me. I get too wrapped up in the sound of my voice, I get frustrated by how many times I say um, and I eventually lose focus and decide I’m hungry or tired or that I’ll try again later even though I know I won’t.
When I type out my prayers, I can blink and have 2000 words, even after starting with, “I’m not really sure what to say today.” I can write pages and pages, spilling out every concern that comes to mind, complete with a few apologies—Did I say this already? Do I pray for this all the time? Are you sick of me?
Sometimes while I’m writing out a prayer, I’m surprised at how much I’m writing around—how much I’m not saying. I will type out sentences and then delete them, as if removing them from the page strikes them from the record. I will hold my fingers above the keyboard, trying to reword the thought in my head to make it sound nicer, or I’ll wait for it to pass so I can say something else entirely.
And like any other essay or writing project, I’ve often found myself tapping my foot or staring at the blinking cursor on the screen, asking myself, what am I even trying to say?
Because sometimes I don’t have specific prayers. Sometimes I don’t know what I want or how to ask for it. Sometimes I have no idea what brought me into prayer that day, just that it’s heavy and hard to hold and I can’t do it on my own.
So sometimes, I just pray for the feeling.
I write short, disjointed sentences or a handful of disconnected words.
They are pieces of a prayer that I don’t know how to put together yet, but that doesn’t make them any less of a prayer.
On these days, I ask God to hear the prayers I don’t have words for yet. To be a keeper of all records, even those I delete from the page or am unwilling to write at all. To hear the prayers that are still a few layers deep in my heart. To know what I want and what I need, even if I don’t know how to ask for either.
So yes, don’t be afraid to pray specifically, to pray expectantly. But also, don’t be afraid to pray abstractly. To have absolutely no idea how to put into words what you need, but to try anyway, or to simply sit in silence and ask God to hear your heart.
Prayer is prayer. And I think the important part of specificity is who you’re praying to, not what you’re praying for.