2020 needs no introduction, but this tumultuous year introduced me to three new prayers. My conversations with Jesus grew sweeter and more intimate while the world around me seemed to move further away, and these simple prayers proved cathartic for my soul. You might find them helpful. Just in case, here’s how I bumped into them.
“Can I hold you?”
My two-year-old friend, Nora, asks me this question all the time when she wants me to carry her. I weigh 180 more pounds than Nora does. I’m almost three times her height. She can’t hold me. She can only hold onto me—and then only with my help. When her legs grow tired, when her eyelids grow heavy, she just wants to feel unheavy—to not carry anything, including herself. Sometimes, I ask her to walk a little bit farther first; but I usually sweep her off her feet into the corner of my arm. On the days when she’s ready for a nap, I feel the weight of her head on my shoulder.
This year—thanks to Nora’s example—I’ve started asking Jesus if I could hold him. A couple times, I’ve even asked him Nora’s exact phrase, “Can I hold you?” That request proves even more impossible than what Nora asks me. I can’t hold God. I can’t touch Jesus. I couldn’t tell you the color or smell or height of the Holy Spirit. I can’t even hold the trees and rocks and clouds I do see. But God knows what I mean. I just want to hold on, want to rest my legs, want to collapse into his strength. Sometimes, he asks me to walk a little longer and hold his hand while we make more steps. And other times, he doesn’t audibly answer “Yes.” I just feel my feet dangle, my shoulders relax. Not indefinitely. Not until I atrophy. Not all the time. Just enough to get me to the place where I can stand again, even if it’s from the same place I will soon again ask, “Can I hold you?”
My problems aren’t solved. News reports don’t suddenly glow hopeful. The finish line doesn’t get any closer. But my heart gets to take a nap. My soul feels swaddled. The inhales and exhales feel more than physical. When Jesus sets me back on my feet, I have enough energy to make it to bedtime.
“Lord, I give everyone and everything to you.”
John Eldrige released a book this summer about daily practices to experience Jesus’ presence. Many of these affirmed the tactile ways I’ve been intentionally pursuing the divine. While talking to Jesus or listening to music about him, I’ve run my palms down coarse bark; I’ve reached my fingers out to different plant textures; I’ve bent down to smell flowers & foliage; I’ve stood barefoot in the current of a mountain creek; I’ve watched lightning for hours on end. I’ve let wonder gurgle into my tank until I’m full.
To make room in my heart for that, I’ve prayed the prayer of Eldrige’s book over and over again. “Lord, I give everyone and everything to you.” When another worry interrupts, I pray it again. After someone threatens my autonomy or steals my dignity, I pray it again. As I feel my fists clench, I pray it again. Instinctively, I exhale a huge breath after I say those words.
Jesus doesn’t need me to give him those things. He’s already got them. If prayer is just aligning our hearts with God’s, this prayer moves my heart toward that goal. For me, it’s right up there with “Not my will but yours be done.” This isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it kind of prayer. I have to pray this prayer multiple times a week, but each time lowers my heart rate just a tad.
A Prayer of No Words
One of my mentors invited me over to his house on a quiet morning before he moved three states away. I don’t handle solemn moments well. I subvert them with humor or sabotage them with trivial rabbit trails. I was doing all of that again when Todd invited me to be quiet. He scrolled through his Spotify and clicked on a song I had never heard before. A musical version of Psalm 23 vibrated from the Bluetooth speaker on the coffee table. We both got on our knees and placed our heads on the rug between us and the concrete floor.
And wept.
It was prayer, but it didn’t need words. Hot tears carried our sorrow and our hopes to the Holy Spirit. God didn’t need our words. He knew. He always knows. Based on his biographies, he also understands what it is to have a lump in his throat—to choke out words and then stop trying to speak. I felt kinship with Sovereignty both in that converted car port and when I cried other prayers this year, most of them up on a mountain. After Ahmad Arberry was murdered. Thanking Jesus that my brother is still alive. Trying to pray the promises of “Champion.” Watching my buddy, Nate, sing during an online Christmas Eve service. I straight ugly cried, chest heaving, shoulders shaking. At times, I literally couldn’t see straight—like looking out the windshield during hurricane-force rain.
Those tears rinsed something clean in every one of those situations, though. They eroded the crusty edges of heartache. They restored a softness I needed in order not to succumb to 2020, to my dysfunctions, to the brokenness I find in every direction I walk.
When climbing at high altitudes, mountaineers systematically force the breath out of their lungs into the thin air with an ardent, exaggerated exhale. This gives them room to take in as much air as possible, since oxygen is less concentrated in their environment. These new prayers have helped me clear my soul in a similar way. This past year, we’ve all had to breathe in more than we can use to get enough good things to sustain us. My guess is that even after COVID is vanquished, our world will still offer lots of empty air and insufficient concentrations of oxygen. If and when it does, I’ll again use these exaggerated exhales to be able to breathe in what God has for me.
And if you ever see me out of breath, you have permission to ask me what I was praying about.
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