Praying Our Experiences
When Life Gets Rough
The Holy Spirit, if we learn to listen, invites us to bring our own story into God’s presence, and to allow our experience to be received, listened to, and seen in the gracious light of the Great Story of God.
We may discover that the thrust of certain troubles catapults us into praying our experience without any thought of preparation. We are not quiet, open, ready to listen. But we are yelling in God’s direction for help, like a little child who cries out to his or her parent because of fear and danger.
At other times, as we come to our place of prayer and open our attention to God, we are ready to notice the tense times of the day (or of some other day) and to begin unloading our hearts’ burdens in God’s presence.
We may discover that the psalms express our feelings, and give us words to describe our experience, to embody our pain. Over half of the psalms are prayers of lament and complaint. The Hebrew tradition is long and rich in this permission-giving of voicing our complaints and grieving in the presence of God—even if we are complaining that God is absent in our life experience!
Once the complaint is voiced, the psalms invite us into silence—simply being in the presence of God who listens and is present to our pain. The word “Selah” serves as a marker for these times of silence and waiting. In the time of waiting nothing may seem to happen, however, God is at work within us beyond our conscious awareness. God may also give us guidance or comfort of some kind as we wait. The invitation is to be attentive to God and to what may be offered us.
You do not need to pray the whole psalm. Stay with the words or phrases which embody your experience. Or allow the psalm to become a doorway for you to enter, bringing the memory of your own experience into the presence of God. Above all, God welcomes us as we are and with whatever we carry and drop into God’s lap.