Friday’s Reflection
I AM STARTING TO THINK there’s a connection between my inability to pray honestly and my struggle to share my vulnerabilities and needs in relationships. My girlfriend Madeline lost her husband to cancer four years into their marriage and nine days before the birth of their first child. He was thirty years old. About a year later, Madeline told me that she had stopped going to church. Not because she had given up on God but because church didn’t feel authentic anymore. As she put it, “Everyone is too grateful.” She confessed to me how the devastating loss of her husband had made her experience church differently, noticing what was lacking in the midst of her deep needs for authentic and messy faith that matched the reality of her messy life.
“I never realized until now how no one ever offers up to God their prayers of anger,” she said. “The prayers of the people never include space for those of us who want to honestly and openly acknowledge that life can be unbearably painful. Sometimes what we need are prayers that say, “God, I am angry. Help me live into that anger in a healthy way. Help me be patient with you and with myself . . . Help me stop crying for answers when you know I will never have answers. Help me to learn to live for just today with the things I can’t understand.’ No one ever prays about anger.”
- Enuma Okoro
Reluctant Pilgrim
From pages 94-95 of Reluctant Pilgrim: A Moody, Somewhat Self-Indulgent Introvert’s Search for Spiritual Community by Enuma Okoro. Copyright © 2010 by Enuma Okoro and published by Fresh Air Books. All rights reserved. Used by permission. http://www.upperroom.org/bookstore/. Learn more about or purchase this book.
Today’s Question
Name what burdens you. Share your reflections.
Today’s Scripture Reading
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