The Despair to Prayer Chronicles - Part 1

I've been going full throttle again, concerned about how I'll keep my head above water as we enter the busy holiday season.

With back to school needs behind me; coat drives, food drives, Thanksgiving and Christmas loom in the not too distant future. And all of that is on top of day to day responsibilities.

I  can sense feelings of becoming overwhelmed creeping up. I'm feeling a little desperate but I've also walked this road long enough to know I need to be securely plugged into God's presence to make it through.

Yesterday, I recalled this series I wrote 4 years ago this month. As I read through it, I nodded my head in the affirmative - after all this time, I remembered the experience well.

All those years ago, I felt like I was going down for the third time until I was able to lean on the strong arms that pulled me out.

I don't want to visit that place of desperation again, but I can feel the water rising so I know I need to make a move to my knees.

Are you feeling a little desperate today? 

Join me in revisiting my journey from despair to prayer. I think it bears repeating, and I pray you'll find the same encouragement I did re-reading it. It's a 6 part journey and I'll share one entry each day this week...


Two weeks ago, I wrote to a friend..."The demands of every day existence are just too much...I'm really feeling inept.  I just can't make it all work.  I feel like I'm letting everyone down, dropping the ball and I don't want to pick it back up.  I don't want to help another soul.  I'm done.  I just don't know what God wants me to do.  I feel so empty...so far from God, and too tired to pray.  I'm ready to throw in the towel and tell everybody to just go away."

Perhaps you really need to know me to understand how foreign those statements are.

I'm the one who's always smiling...always helping someone...always socializing...always talking to God throughout the day.

"No problem" is my motto.

So what on earth was going on?  I was obviously tired...more like exhausted.  Sometimes my 50 year old body has to remind my brain that regardless of what IT thinks, I am NOT 25 anymore, and pushing myself to the limit will cause rebellion of one body part or another, if not an all out strike across the spectrum of my being.

Then again, hormonal, emotional, and relational stuff added to the physical "abuse" of committing to too much and it all took its toll spiritually.  Not only had my desire and ability to express myself through the written word dried up, I couldn't...or wouldn't...pray.

Now here's what's the most interesting thing about that.  

For weeks - maybe even more like a month or two - I've been mulling over writing a post on prayer.  Many people have asked how I keep my prayer life 'interesting' and not 'dry'...how I keep from making it a laundry list of requests, or how I'm able to be consistent.

I'm no expert, but I thought I was doing pretty well in the prayer department.

I pray every morning during my ride to work and often on the ride home as well.  If something especially challenging comes up during the day, I've been known to leave the building and go to a quite place nearby to pray. If a friend called asking for prayer, I'd head into the stairwell and pray over the phone with them right then and there.  Or stop and pray over an email.  When prayer requests came to me for a doctor's visit, an interview, whatever, I always asked what time it was taking place so I could concentrate my praying while the event was going on.  And then there's the monthly women's prayer group I lead. 

I felt God answered many of my prayers in the positive.  One person recently told me he was glad I'd be praying for a mission trip he was going on because he thought of me as a 'person of prayer' and another friend went so far as to say that I got more answers to prayer than anyone he knew.

So, no, I'm not an expert on the subject, but because I know the impact it has had on my life and the lives of others, I thought about giving some 'tips' on what worked for me.  The problem was, I wrote and rewrote the post many different ways, but none of them expressed what I wanted to say.  I found it hard to get a foothold on the subject, and therefore, it sat in my drafts, occasionally revisited, but never published.

Then, all of a sudden, I found myself in the desert.  Where was this 'person of prayer' now?  Why did the thought of speaking to my Creator feel like a chore that I couldn't bring myself to execute?  When I wrote to my friend about feeling empty and far from God, I knew it wasn't God who had moved away.

I was keenly aware the problem was within my heart...I just couldn't push past the busyness of my life to recharge.  

I became overwhelmed by all I needed "to do" and it paralyzed me from moving forward.  In some ways, I was Peter, taking my eyes off the Savior and putting them squarely on the swirling waters underfoot.  Quickly, I began to drown...

The Cat in the Hat vs The God in the Bible

My feet are firmly planted...so much so, I've begun to grow roots.

It's not because I'm standing my ground or bravely taking an injustice on.  Nothing that valiant.
       
                   I'm frozen from confusion.
  
                             Overwhelmed.

                                      Dismayed.

I'm thinking about everything I need to do, should do, want to do...and I have no idea where to begin. 

I'm reminded of a quote from that childhood staple, "The Cat in the Hat"...'And this mess is so big, and so deep and so tall, we cannot pick it up.  There is no way at all!'

My mess is not a pile of physical things.  Well, maybe part of it is.  Having just finished a major community outreach project, I'm playing catch up.

Clothes are somewhere between needing to go downstairs to be washed and needing to go upstairs to be folded and put away; the dining room table resembles a messy desk; kitchen counter tops are cluttered and there are dishes in the sink.  That alone can slow me down.

But there's more.  There are things that need a more concentrated thought process than housework.  I need to do some writing and research for an upcoming writer's conference, there's the third installment of my blog series on the Free Market I need to tackle, books to read, emails to send, calls to make.  And I'm not even at work this week.

And then there's that tug in my spirit to relax.  I want to take these 5 days away from the office and put my toes in the sand, maybe catch a movie, have lunch with a friend.  But I feel guilty because of the more 'important' things that need my attention.

And so I stand in the middle of the living room, looking around, uncertain of where or how to begin.  Sound at all familiar?

In frustration I sit down on the couch.  It would be so easy to flip on the TV, push everything from my mind, and veg out. 

Instead, my eye catches my Bible.  I open it to Philippians 4:6-7

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

A few lines later, I have underlined verse 13 as well:  "I can do everything through him who gives me strength."

And so I  remember what that first step should have been.  To lay it all down at His feet.  Are laundry, and bills, and research assignments earth-shattering issues?  No, of course not.  I should be grateful that's all I have to deal with today.  But still, He wants it all.  The big and the small.  Like the verse says..."in everything...present your requests to God."

Because when I do that, then "I can do everything through him who gives me strength."

He can give me the clarity to prioritize, the strength to tackle it bit by bit, and the peace that relaxes my spirit and restores my soul.

When the 'mess is so big, and so deep and so tall, we cannot pick it up.  There is no way at all' it's true...we can't in our strength.  But He can.  And He will.  We just have to ask.