Waiting and praying

I inherited my inability to wait patiently from my father. He would (and did) drive thousands of miles to collect me and/or my sibling from various places/schools/homes/malls/jobs/ when we were younger without a moment's hesitation. And happily at that. But heaven forbid we make him wait one minute beyond that four hour drive - or five minute drive. He wasn't the least bit bothered by the length of time it took to reach his child, only the time spent waiting for her once he arrived.

And yeah, I'm kind of like that. Minus the kids waiting to be picked up, of course.

So after Mass I always sit in the pew and wait until the hoards file out of the church and start to vacate the parking lot, because my hackles rise almost instantly when I'm faced with the prospect of a waiting in my car. And then sitting in stop and go traffic until I can turn onto the main road home.

Sometimes I sit in my pew and watch the little groups chatting after Mass. Other times I kneel with my eyes closed in what would appear to be prayer, but usually actually isn't. I have trouble concentrating on prayer when people are moving and chatting around me. I'm entirely too nosy for after Mass prayer.

Why I bother making it look as though I'm praying is beyond me. Maybe I'm secretly hoping that God won't notice I'm planning the week's meals in my head. Maybe I'm hoping he'll just take a quick glance at my exceptional praying form (head bowed, eyes closed) and give me a gold star that I can redeem later in life.

I could use a gold star. He owes me.

Which brings me to the point of all this.

Last Sunday whilst I was kneeling in what no one would ever suspect wasn't prayer, I happened to look up and see an extremely pregnant woman standing at the foot of the altar staring up at the depiction of Jesus and his disciples. She was deep in thought (or maybe prayer, who am I to judge?) and was patting her belly very deliberately, as though punctuating whatever words were running through her mind with each little pat.

I froze in horror. And in my mind I screamed, "No, no, no - it won't make any difference! What will be, will be no matter how fervent those prayers are - no matter how hard you plead!"

And that seems like an awful reaction.

But I still think it's true. God help me, I do.

I admit that sometimes I still whisper quiet, tentative prayers for people who I think need them. I have asked God to cure. To save. Even since Thomas, I have uttered those words. Even when I know how utterly and completely they failed when I prayed them nearly five years ago.

And that's why I'm not sure they make any difference at all, those frantic, pleading kind of prayers.

Because, if you've noticed, people still die no matter how many people are busily begging for a different outcome. Because that's when they were supposed to die. Period.

I believe in God. I believe in miracles. I believe in the power of prayer - but only in so much as it can bring comfort to the helpless who have no other recourse but to beg, so that they feel they've done something. Anything.

I just don't believe in that kind of prayer anymore. There are other kinds, of course. Prayers of gratitude? Those are fine. Prayers for guidance and clarity? Also fine. But prayers to save the lives of others? I don't think anyone here has that kind of power, no matter how fervent the words, or how many of us are saying them.

I don't see this as a weakness or some little chink in my armor of faith. I see this as a realistic way to proceed from this point on. To ask God to save someone when it's their time to die only sets me up for the kind of confusion, feelings of betrayal and all-consuming anger I felt when Thomas died.

I hope the woman at Mass has a healthy child. But I can't pray for that because it's already decided.

No matter what I want. It's already decided.

Prayers and a plea

I admit that I don't really understand how prayers work anymore. I used to. Or I thought I did, anyway. But the useless, frantic prayers I said for Thomas weren't answered - at least not the way I wanted them to be - and I've remained very wary of the "power of prayer" ever since.

But just in case they are sometimes heard and answered in ways that bring us smiles instead of tears, could you remember a friend of mine in yours today? She underwent a kidney transplant a week ago yesterday and things aren't looking very good.

She says she can feel the prayers being sent her way. If this is true, I'd love for her to feel more. As many as you can spare.

I'm sending mine too, but I worry that mine are too small. Too weak. I have little faith in my own prayers and in their ability to be heard.

Please. Help?

When I listen

Saint Theresa's Prayer  

May today there be peace within.
May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.
May you be content knowing you are a child of God.
Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.
It is there for each and every one of us.

My cousin sent me this today, and it was exactly what I needed to hear.

I don't understand God, or the ways in which he works. But when I pay attention, every once in a while a message manages to slip through the cracks and find its way into my heart.

It's funny what you hear when you really listen

My favourite priest did the sermon this morning, so I listened attentively. I tend to wool-gather a whole lot less when he's preaching because I almost always find a message in his words. And messages from the great big guy in the sky have been very few and far between for me since Thomas died, sometimes no matter how hard I listen.

But Father Mark somehow always seems to hit a nerve, to cut to the very heart of the matter and demonstrate his understanding of a God I can actually live with.

Today he was talking about the importance of prayer. Blah, blah, blah, I initially thought, because prayer has proven mostly useless to me since the moment I found myself lying on an operating table begging God not to take my son two and a half years ago.

And when the answer to my small, frightened prayers this summer was miscarried twins and a D&C fraught with complications I began to believe even less in the "ask and it shall be answered" dogma I've been taught my whole little Catholic life.

But this morning Father Mark presented it in slightly different way.

Pray often and fervently, he encouraged, but be warned. Be warned? Be warned, because praying this way often results in getting what you've asked for.

The quiet pew-sitter raised a skeptical eyebrow here, and the inner cynic started howling with rage. I prayed my ass off the entire time I was pregnant with Thomas, and all I have to show for it is a dead child and a trail of broken hearts.

But he went on...

You're likely to get what you've asked for because in praying - in focusing your heart and energies on thinking about the thing that you so fervently desire - you make yourself open and more willing to take the steps necessary to get that thing - to achieve that desired end.

And this isn't even remotely "Secret-like". It's not about throwing energy out into the universe and waiting for it to pick up good vibes in the atmosphere and rain them back down on you, along with BMWs and winning lottery tickets. This is you focusing on what you want, internalizing it - and then getting up and doing something about it.

I realize this still doesn't explain how I have a dead son - how I have 5 dead babies - when I did pray hard and did do everything I could to try to bring those children safely into the world.

But regardless, the thing that I like about this vision of prayer is that it puts so much of the power in my hands. It's not all about that magical dude in the sky and his passing whims and fancies.

And I like that very much.

I've been trying to figure out what the hell the point in praying is if God is going to do whatever he wants no matter how much I beg, cajole and plead, but now I kind of see that prayer is as much as exercise for me as it is a dialogue with God. At least this kind of prayer, anyway.

It's not magic, at least not entirely, it's self-motivation.

I don't know what to do with the problem of unanswered prayers and their resulting dead babies, but I'm somewhat comforted by this new vision of prayer that Father Mark presented this morning just the same.

Of course, I could also be taking it all the wrong way and twisting his words to suit my own spiritual needs, but this is truly what I took away from the sermon today. And even though it still doesn't explain how or why so many important prayers seem to fall on deaf ears and go unanswered no matter how many steps we take to get them answered (because God knows I did every single thing in my power to bring Thomas safely into the word), at least there was a measure of comfort at Mass today.

And sometimes a measure of comfort is just enough to keep on keeping on.