06/17/2026
Josie Here!
Prayer and I have an interesting, complicated relationship. You see, when I was young, I went to church every Sunday, and there was plenty of liturgy and times for prayer with the whole congregation. Similarly, I learned to say grace before dinner each night and the Lord’s Prayer before going to bed. When it came to liturgical or ritualistic prayer, especially in a group, I was set and was able to figure out what to do pretty quickly.
But my experience was different when it came to the more personal and private forms of prayer - (I’ve seen the term “devotional prayer” used, and I hope that’s accurate). In Sunday school, when they taught us how to pray by ourselves, it was always described as a “conversation with God.” Now, to all my classmates, this seemed to make perfect sense. God is up in heaven, and we all have a special hotline to communicate with him. So even though I would close my eyes and try my absolutely hardest to pray, without any disembodies voice responding, I figured, "eh, I must just not have the hang of it yet." Of course, the joke was on me when there were other students in the class saying, “God helped me make an important decision today,” or “I was worried about something, but God told me it was going to be okay,” less than a week later. What?? God’s returning YOUR calls already? What am I doing wrong?
Over time, my understanding of prayer did expand beyond just an image of a human and God sitting on a park bench a la Good Will Hunting - but in my head, it remained something that always had an air of esotericism to it - in that it was something some people in-the-know were really good at, other people were “okay” at, and everyone else was bad or just didn’t do it. It’s only been in recent years where prayer, along with my understanding of faith, has expanded to be so much less hierarchical or competitive.
Public discourse is getting better at recognizing how different people need different ways engage with the same things, whether it’s people learning more about neurodiversity or how people learn information better through different mediums. I’ve tried to take that same approach with prayer. I’ve never gotten much out of the ritualistic group prayers that you might find in high-church environments or big cathedrals, but I completely understand how a lot of people find vital solace and community in those environments, doing those activities. I’m much to antsy to clear my mind and do silent meditation, but the people who are capable of it often swear by it, and I have no doubt that they’re being truthful.
So where do I go, too anxious to pray as a group, but too fidgety to pray in quiet meditation? Well, I do my best to replicate the state of mind that I feel helps others pray. I can’t “empty my mind,” but I can go for a walk listening to my favorite musical artist and turn the rushing rapids in my head into a calm river. I can’t think through a situation that is frustrating and upsetting me because I’m too dysregulated, but I can try to play guitar, reforming a moment of anguish to a moment of controlled emotional expression. And then, HOPEFULLY, I can really think. I can ponder. I can ask those questions, voice those concerns. And while the clear and present voice of a bearded and robed God doesn’t necessarily answer me back, something exists there in that relative peace and calm that just…beckons. It doesn’t instruct, it doesn’t contradict, it doesn’t argue. It just beckons, ever so slightly, in a direction. And it always feels trustworthy for some reason.
Is that God? Is that the voice of my parents, for better or worse? Is it my medication? I can’t be sure. But I have faith that it beckons me somewhere good, somewhere that will help me, one way or another. So for my question, I’m not going to ask what specifically you do whenever you pray. I’ll instead ask, how do you “hear” that “voice”? Where is it for you? What do you do if you can’t find it?
And as always, stay safe and stay hopeful. Look out for the storms!
