I prayed yesterday, out loud, in an online prayer meeting, for a family that has been going through a prolonged period of incredible suffering.
It was a small thing for me to pray and yet, also huge, since I haven’t prayed for almost 20 years. Not even in private, by myself. Definitely not in public. Mostly I would rather not.
It was not supposed to be about me, but, a bit embarrassingly, I found out that it also was about me, that praying was very unexpectedly validating and healing for me.
I have been following the story of this Christian family (that are close friends of the family of one of my brothers – I have met at least some of them) for several months and I have been so moved. I have so wanted to help a little, if I could. Then recently I felt like maybe I did have something helpful to contribute, which maybe is specific to me, so, not going to come from others in quite the same way? Something possibly unique?
I’ve mostly got updates from joining this family’s live daily prayer meetings, on and off. The updates have been truly amazing – they have seen miracle after miracle over this past year. After the daily updates they often have a time of live worship music. They have an amazing group of people who provide the live worship, regularly, but not every day. After that they have an open prayer time in which anyone attending is welcome to pray out loud.
I generally have left soon into the worship time because often it is literally painful for me to hear worship music.
Anyway, after listening, and recent updates, I sort of found I had a cup of cold water in my hands, for them. I wanted to give it to them, but I didn’t know how. (This analogy is from Matthew 10:42 but I honestly was not in it just for the reward! I forgot that was part of the verse, to be honest, until I looked it up just now)
I realized that actually the best way was simply show up and be one of the people who prayed with them, in their meeting.
The problem was, I don’t pray. It may sound like a silly barrier but bear in mind what I said about worship music literally causing me pain.
Anyway I decided maybe I should have a go and pray yesterday. There was even a particular verse that had come to my mind, to pray for them: Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”). After almost a year of this they must all be extremely weary.
Anyway I needed to connect by airpods or headphones in order to be able to speak at the meeting. Usually this happens easily but I had to keep trying over and over again yesterday. As the update part of the meeting began, I was trying to listen but also frantically trying to connect either by headphones or airpods. I was getting to the point of wondering whether I would be prevented from praying by technical difficulties.
And frankly I was feeling a bit of relief at that thought because I was getting quite nervous about praying, right then and there.
I did finally get connected and meanwhile the update that day had been a disarmingly honest one that was actually about a family member sharing how hard this has been for them. That somehow helped me feel I could be brave enough to pray, maybe. Also it made me want to pray for them and the whole family, even more, to try to offer comfort that way.
So I didn’t even know the process because I hadn’t done it before. I emailed one of the hosts that I’d like to pray but didn’t know what I needed to do. Their response a bit shockingly was to unmute my mic, which I realized meant, go ahead, now! I hadn’t expected to be one of the first ones but, ok, here goes –
And I sort of fell apart emotionally at that moment. But then I was able to pray more or less as I had felt drawn to do, with the verse I had felt was the right one for that time.
Afterwards I was thanked for a beautiful prayer which meant a lot to someone who hadn’t done that for almost 20 years and almost wasn’t brave enough to try.
I turned off my camera again because it took me a while to stop crying afterwards. And I was a bit embarrassed because the crying was mostly about me – I didn’t want them to misinterpret my emotions as “wow, she cares so much!” I mean, I do care and that was part of it. Because once I started praying and was really doing it, I realized something about my choice to stop praying years ago. That although it was a choice it had also somehow turned into a mandate as well. It had become “you are not worthy to pray! You are not eligible to be part of this grou! How dare you. You can’t pray – you will be lying or pretending or taking advantage of Christians. You don’t have the faith it requires to pray. That’s the truth. Get over it, move on, and leave those poor suffering Christians alone. Yeah it’s ok to listen but don’t try to participate!! You’re not eligible! You’re not one of them!
I can see now that I had been subconsciously struggling with the following thinking recently:
Bottom line, I want to be honest. On the whole I can’t use words like other Christians do and seem to love doing, because I feel like I am pretending or lying if I do. Also because it hurts emotionally, by the way, on the whole.
I feel like I would be lying or pretending. I don’t want to take advantage of people, especially people who are already suffering a lot. I’m not really eligible to pray, am I? Why is this even bothering me? I thought I was fine with being a non-praying person and not participating in Christian communal activities like worship and prayer. I know it usually hurts to do that.
But – in this situation, in spite of all of that, I was feeling moved to do something, and it seemed like that something was going to be praying in their meeting and somehow I came to feel like, well actually, maybe it wouldn’t be a lie or pretence or taking advantage, to go ahead and do that. In a way I can’t really explain, I did sort of come around to, maybe it would be ok.
It still took courage (and perseverance that was unanticipated, on the technical side). And was unexpectedly emotional. And was embarrassingly about me. Unexpectedly freeing, healing and validating afterward when people said thanks for that beautiful prayer.
I don’t know what comes next. I probably still will prefer not to pray – my reasons for not praying are still there. But I hadn’t realized the woundedness that came with not praying. I felt it was significantly healed yesterday. I am happy about that and happy I got to give a family that almost died of thirst this year, and is still going through that, one cup of cold water. I do hope for healing for all of them too – that the miracles will continue.
If you would like to pray with this family in their daily prayer meetings you can email me at helen mildenhall at gmail dot com and I will send you the instagram page with the link for them. The meetings are open to everyone, but please be respectful if you do join. Read the instagram posts first to understand the context. And please bear in mind this precious family mostly is asking for prayer support, not practical help or advice. They will share any specific prayer requests they have that day along with the daily update.