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Thursday, March 15, 2018

I'm a terrible pray-er

I have written before that I feel wildly uncomfortable when people in the extremely early stages of emotion take it to social media.

And I am not a person who easily feels wildly uncomfortable, but there is just so much rawness in what they post. It doesn't really matter if the early emotion is joy or pain.

If the emotion is the early stage of love or a new job, it is off-the-chain ecstatic, and I am waiting for them to come back to planet Earth where the person they adore is human again and prone to frailty. Or the job gets real and they screw up or have a shit co-worker or get laid-off.

(I do give a pass to new parents, though.)

I feel exactly as I did when Tom Cruise lost his mind over Katie Holmes (after marriage one and two disintegrated): embarrassed and waiting for the other shoe to drop.


If the early stage emotion is fear or grief, it is equally uncomfortable, but the worst part is that I am asked to pray...

which makes me feel even more uncomfortable because I know what they want me to pray for.

Pray for a miracle.
Pray for a cure.
Pray for complete healing.
Sometimes it is unsaid, and sometimes it is an outright request.

Unfortunately, I am not the person who goes "ok" or "screw that" and then moves on with her life.
I am the person who stews over it and feels bad because I can't pray the way the person asks me and others to pray.

Asking me to pray for what they want, even though I totally understand it, even though I totally understand the rawness of their pain, maybe, possibly isn't the right thing to pray for.
I am entirely not God, and maybe a miracle or cure or complete healing isn't part of the program.
Who the heck am I to read God's mind? Or to tell God what to do?

I can pray for their comfort.
I can pray that they find some solace in this bad, hard, terrible-to-get-through experience.
I can pray that they are surrounded by love.
But I cannot in good conscience pray for what they want.

I feel affected their grief and responsible for their loss because I didn't pray for what they asked.
Perhaps my prayer is that the person is on my mind and heart for far, far longer than the other people who said, "Lift a prayer" and then got back to the business of whatever they do.

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