Prayer: Dialogue with the Divine - Part 2

In my last post, I began to address some of my thoughts on prayer. I wanted to address another aspect of prayer. This understanding has been a long time coming and I try every day to better practice it in my own prayers. Today I want to talk about dialogue. The dictionary defined dialogue as “a conversation between two or more people” This seems pretty straightforward, and maybe it was and is for a lot of people. But in all honesty, it isn’t that way for me. It has never been. Now, I’ve been a member my entire life. I was raised by faithful parents. They taught me to pray and we had family prayer regularly. It’s not that I didn’t know what the act of prayer was. My confusion lay deeper. I didn’t understand the nature of prayer or really how to go about it.

About a year ago I was going through a particularly frustrating phase in my life. I went out with a friend one evening and began to vent about my many frustrations. After patiently listening to my rant for about 30 minutes, he calmly asked me a question:

“Hey Lee, how are prayers?”

I was taken aback by this. Had he not been listening to anything I had just been saying? What did my prayers have to do with anything? Wanting him to get to his point and explain himself, I indulged him. I told him I was praying. I prayed everyday; normally multiple times a day; morning, meal times, in class, and evening.

“Good for you. But I guess I’m asking what are your prayers like? How do you pray and how do you feel when you pray?”

I was a little bit confused. “I’m pretty sure I pray like everyone" (I was probably sounding a little defensive in this response). :Like, the normal way.”

He asked me what that looked like for me. I told him that I first addressed God, thanked him for the blessings in my life and asked him for what I felt I needed at that time.

Having a relationship with God is a lot like having a relationship with anyone else. He said that I should try and talk to him as I would talk to someone else. I was again taken aback. That was not at all the way I had learned to pray. I felt as though he was suggesting I take the formality out of my prayer; and in a way, he was. I still didn’t know how to pray the way my friend was suggesting. He decided he would demonstrate. He began to repeat much of what I had said to him when I was letting him know how frustrating and difficult the past weeks had been:

“Heavenly Father, the past few weeks have been really hard. I’ve been really angry with some of the people around me. I was really hurt by so and so last week. And I spent hours studying for that test and i did really bad on it, despite all my hard work. That sucked. I hated myself after it. I’m angry with myself that I did so badly and beat myself up about it, even now. I don’t want to anymore. I want to be able to let go of my anger. Father, I’m really stressed about my relationship with so and so. I’m so afraid things won’t work out. But I want so badly for things to go well with her.”

Tears came to my eyes as I sat in awe, staring at my friend. How did he do that? I don’t know if the words above can convey the feeling that was in them as he gave this simple demonstration for me. But it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever heard.

Upon reflecting on this moment over the weeks that followed, I realized at least in part why I found it so beautiful. It was the feeling and impression that I got as he said these words; a very strong conviction that even God--creator of all-- cared about these seemingly insignificant aspects of my daily life. He cared about my minor pains and fears. He had concern for my daily stress and frustration. Not only did he know and care about these; but he wanted me to talk to him about them. I felt that He wanted to be my first source of venting these pains and frustrations.

In Interstellar, this is something that is easy for Tom (Cooper’s son) to do. Having lived with and cultivated a personal, tangible relationship with his father for years before Cooper went to space. He knew that his father was interested in the details of his life. Having established that relationship over the course or years, it was not difficult for him to talk about anything with his father in his messages. No topic was too menial or unimportant.

The same is true of our Heavenly Father. Living in a fallen world that divides us from His immediate presence can make this type of relationship seem less tangible or personal. When in truth, our relationship with God has the potential to be deepest, most intimate, and most satisfying relationship we develop in this life. He wants to hear us. He wants us to talk to him about what is on our minds. If it is important to us, it is important to him.

This was always a hard thing for me to understand. I have struggled for to try wrap my mortal mind around the concept of God’s love and attention. It has been hard for me to understand how he could know and love me, while he knew and loved the billions and billions of people around me. It didn’t make sense. And even if God loved me, I found it hard to understand how he could have time for me. With quality time as one of my love languages, it has been hard on my relationship with God. But a friends some time years ago let me know that God spoke all the love languages; even my language of quality time. That was what I needed. I guess I’ve known that God always knows what I need and what is going on, but I wanted to tell Him. I wanted Him to listen to me as I spoke with Him. I wanted to know He was making time for me, even with His many other children and responsibilities. I wanted Him to be with me, instead of just knowing me. I don’t know if that makes sense, but I wanted His time; time to be with me, talk with me, and really listen to me. And (while I will probably go into more depth about this another time), this also meant that I had to be willing to give Him my time.

Over the last nine months, I’ve done a fairly good job at writing in my journal on a daily basis (yes, I am proud of this accomplishment). It has obviously been a worth-while endeavor, but there are a few experiences in particular that have made it a life-changing project.

A few weeks ago, I was having a particularly rough day. I was frustrated, sad, and anxious about a number of things. That night when I got home, I did something I’ve only ever done a couple times in my life; I wrote a prayer. The only thing I wrote in my journal that night was a prayer. The prayer was simple and straightforward. I did as my friend had demonstrated and talked about what was on my mind and how I was feeling. I realized that as I did this, I didn’t so much care for God to fix it, but I noticed how much peace I felt just getting it out.

Still struggling to believe that He was really listening to my prayers, I decided to say a prayer after finishing in my journal. My verbal prayer was short. I really only asked for one thing: I wanted my Heavenly Father to read my prayer. I wanted Him to see the words I had written, as I had written them. I finished my prayer and went to bed.

A few days later, I was in the library doing homework, when I felt the impression to take time to write in my journal. I opened my journal and began to write when I very clearly felt the presence of the Spirit with the words:

“Every. Single. Word.”

Prayer allows us direct communication The Divine.

It took only a few seconds for me to make sense of it. But quickly my mind turned back to days before when I had earnestly asked my Father in Heaven to take time to read my prayer from my journal; and He had. His answer was clear and left no room for doubt in my mind. He was there. He was listening -- and reading-- every word I offered Him in sincerity. He did so because He wants to, not because He had to. He did it because it was important to Him; because it was important to me. He did it, and continues to do it, because few things bring Him more joy than knowing that His children want to talk with Him and want to know He listens. I promise that He wants to hear from you. I promise that He wants to talk to you. And I promise that He listens to you; every. single. word.