My Word document sat empty for an hour while the cursor blinked back at me. How long can I stare at this laptop screen and type nothing? I did everything I could to avoid sitting quietly with my laptop and working on my latest writing assignment. I was uncomfortable sitting in the awkwardness of not knowing what it will be. Will it be worth it? Can I will the result? Will writing respond the way that I want it to respond?

***

I hear my husband remind our boys—you play like you practice. I needed that, I thought. I just want the thing done so badly, and I want it done right and well and the way I want. And I almost find a restlessness within and an avoidance of stillness and quiet because I don’t yet know what it will be. Don’t we get this way in prayer?

I am so exasperated by the facts that I dare not submit them to the Giver of facts because I concede my lack of control. I don’t know what will be. More precisely put: I don’t know what God will make it to be. And like my husband coached our kids, I find true of our prayer life: we pray like we practice.

***

When is the last time you sat uncomfortably in prayer without some predictability or agenda?

We recite scripture as prayer. We implement prayer recitations. We journal our prayers. We say breath prayers as we work about our day. It’s all prayer! But when is the last time we were still for five minutes with just silence before God?

When I set my timer and weakly try, it’s quite uncomfortable. I don’t want to be quiet. I don’t want to set my phone down. I don’t want to turn off the noise (can I even?). I don’t want to not have a scripture checklist I’m working through. I don’t want to not make some sort of measurable progress. I don’t want my mind to weave in and out like the dog that sees a squirrel every other second. All good or normal things, but I don’t want to dispense with structure and admit I am blessedly, helplessly not in control—not one iota—not in the way the conveniences of life make me think—not even in the façade of ordering my own business most days and packing the day full because I can and will make it all work. I don’t want to confront my emptiness, my weakness, my insufficiency of will. Don’t make me!  

***

Do the darn thing I tell myself as I again open my laptop to an empty document and another hour set aside to try to write an article in a writing style I have rarely—if ever—written. And I feel about writing how I feel about praying—that there is this great resistance or self-created dread until I tether myself to the couch for even just a fleeting moment, and God is near, whether I feel it or not.

***

I start writing in the middle, and it’s messy and weak, but the story yarn starts to build. And what was the silliest, weakest attempt at a creative sentence gave birth to another sentence that never would have been born had I not sat my hind end down and just tried.

Will we try? Will we just try to show up for a few minutes of free-fall, unbridled listening to God? Oh, how it makes me so uncomfortable to not know if that rings a good cost-benefit-analysis bell because so many people need help, and I am behind on my Bible reading plan, and I have good work to do for God.

And then the minute of listening becomes two minutes. And then later in the day, something that felt like unwitting prayer gains meaning because God’s Spirit was absolutely steering our frail five minutes of bobbing in and out of listening because we do nothing, not even prayer, apart from Him.  

***

If we pray how we practice, let us practice surrender.

Help us, Lord.