Setting Down My Prayer List

It’s been one year and three days since we received our referral. Three hundred and sixty eight days of many ups and even more downs. In light of the recent events with our agency and the anniversary of our referral, I revived a long-standing, never-actualized desire to travel to St. Bernard’s Abbey, a Benedictine monastery, in Cullman, Alabama for a time of spiritual renewal. The timing finally felt right, and after making a few jokes about “The Thornbirds” to Nathan (which he had to Google), I fished my mind from the gutter and scheduled the visit. I had planned to spend the 48 hours in some sort of intense prayer vigil for movement and mercy with the adoption, but that’s not what it turned into at all…

I arrived at St. Bernard’s at right before 5p mass and vespers on Thursday. Guests at St. Bernard actually sit with the monks and participate in the offices (chanted prayers), so after mass, I anxiously made my way to the chancel area, found a seat, and tried not to make a mistake as we all prayed together.

Dinner followed in silence, which intensified my feeling that I had made a grievous error in thinking there was anything for me at a monastery. What the actual hades had I been thinking? These monks won’t even talk to me. This was probably the stupidest thing I have ever done. I bet Nathan knew this was going to be a train wreck; why didn’t he tell me this was a bad idea? This is totally his fault.

Friday, I woke up at 5:30a ready to pray. After breakfast, I sat down in a rocking chair that became a perch for me for the rest of my time at St. Bernard’s. Before I began my laundry list of adoption related prayers, as has become my custom to pray, I remembered something that I had read from the Sermon on the Mount the night before: the Lord’s Prayer. Well, actually, I remembered the few lines before Jesus gives us the Lord’s Prayer. In Matthew, Jesus says, “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

I can promise y’all, I am a pray-er of “many words.” Throughout this last year, with a little help from the spiritual formation of my childhood, I had developed a truly inaccurate view of the nature and purpose of prayer. The good news: the amount of time I spend in prayer has never been greater. The bad news (kinda embarrassed about this): I had developed this notion that I had to pray for every need we had related to the adoption every day using very specific words (lest God be confus-ed…), or God wouldn’t come to our assistance. Many times I have actually concluded my prayers with the Lord’s Prayer, realized that I forgot to mention a specific prayer need, pried my closed prayer back open to stuff in that need, and then re-recited the Lord’s Prayer, so that my tag-on prayer wouldn’t be invalidated by occurring out of order.

This is messed up on so many levels.

Most importantly, though, what is my prayer life saying about my understanding of the character of God? I’m not trying to self-deprecate too much here, because I believe God abides with us where we are, but prayer was becoming exhausting and weighty and self-centered and neurotic. And that’s all unnecessary. Jesus is all, “your Father knows what you need before you ask him,” and Paul is all, “for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”

I realized, sitting there in that rocking chair, that God loves me. And you know what else? God loves our daughter. And even if I never lifted another prayer need up related to this adoption again, the Spirit will still be interceding for her in Ethiopia just like it will be here. Thanks be to God that her eventual homecoming isn’t dependent on my ability to beg God correctly for it. I don’t have to explicitly name every one of our current needs every morning. God’s already received word; the Spirit delivered the messages more eloquently and quicker than I ever could.  

So, I ended up spending very little time praying for anything specific at the monastery. I just sat there with Jesus. The good news about waking up at dark-thirty for Matins and Lauds (fancy Catholic prayers) is that I was able to I feel the early morning breeze blow across my face for a good two hours afterwards and imagine that it was the “ruach,”, breath of God, confirming God’s presence with me in that rocking chair.

And you know what? Those two days I spent at St. Bernard’s with Jesus, neither one of us was really saying anything, but I still felt heard. It was one of the sweetest spiritual experiences of my life.

Before I left the Abbey, I had a conversation with an incredibly charming monk, Father Francis, about the nature of prayer. He highlighted our culture’s obsession with originality and insisted that the prayers of the Psalms can’t be improved upon. Sold, Father Frances. Toward the end of our conversation, he confirmed, “Prayer isn’t about changing God, it’s about changing you. Let their words [the Psalms] become your words.”

There’s just one problem: when you’ve been talking to God one way for three decades, it can be more than a little difficult to change the nature of your relationship from this side of things. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t ask God for what we need; in fact, God even directs us to ask, seek, and knock. Repeat. I’m not going to go Gregorian-chants-or-nothing with Jesus from this time forward. This is merely a story about my prayer life, not a recommendation for yours. 

For the next few months, I’m going to pray the Psalms or keep quiet and listen. I’m not going to ask God for anything. I’m going to let someone else’s good words become my words, and I’m going to be still and allow the Spirit to do its thing. Because “he knows our needs,” and His glory will be revealed whether I beg for it or not.

By the way, do you know how I know that’s true? Because two days after I returned home, we received an email from our new agency that all the in-country issues with our old agency had been resolved. The biggest obstacle in moving forward – separating from our old agency in-country – was overcome on Friday morning, while I was sitting at a monastery in prayer, not saying a word.

In God’s Grace,

Kameron, Nathan, J. Henry, Amelia and our New Little Girl!