Praying When Life Cracks Open

This current round of chemotherapy treatments reminds me again that I really don't know that much about prayer. Other things play with my body and emotions. My mind gets crazy.

When I get in this place where my body lives in such an altered state, jacked around by chemicals that are so powerfully present in my system, I'm not sure what is real, what is authentic. Bodily sensations tell me lies. Emotions get stacked to one side or the other. Incidents that ordinarily would have little meaning suddenly suggest a huge impact, to which I either over-react or non-react. Sleep deprivation leaves me tired but unable to rest. I'm reminded constantly of how fragile life is, how little control I have over my moment-by-moment existence.

So my "normal" patterns of prayer get thrown out the window. I used to feel guilty for that, as if I was locked into certain ways of relating to God. Then when I felt lost temporarily to those ways, I'd be lost to God.

Years ago, during a particularly devastating life-crisis, I first experienced the drying up of prayer, the days when all the normal patterns and usual "tricks" didn't work any longer. Prayer during those days became an act of faithfully sitting in the chair where I had grown accustomed to praying. Just sitting. Often sitting and weeping. After weeks of guilt over that, I finally heard my own (and God's) release, that my simple act of showing up, weeping, giving my little attentiveness . . . all of that was the only prayer I could offer during those days. And so my little world of prayer was cracked open just a bit.

I carried that framework for prayer into those early days of chemotherapy and cancer treatments after the original diagnosis, finding that the chemicals in my body and the absense of sleep so altered my consciousness that I could not longer pray as I thought I should. Slowly I dropped the "should" and took my own long-given advice: "Pray as you can, not as you cannot!" Dropping the "should" was not easy, mostly because it meant that I had to be as graceful and generous with myself as God is with me. That is an ongoing challenge for me.

Yet, here I am again. During these days of treatments I have less anxiety about getting this right. I have more resolve to stay in it faithfully, not having to conjure up some holy feeling or religious impulse to draw meaning out of the experience. I can still get scared that I'm doing this "all wrong," but I learn day by day the generosity of simply sitting, being loved, and offering my love in the only ways I know how.

Years ago, during one of those particularly difficult times, when I was frustrated with my lot in life, when I wanted to resist the pain and the difficulty of the dark valley I was invited to walk through, I wrote a simple, three-line poem that contained some wisdom not native to me. It is a poem I continue to hold onto, especially in days like this. It is simple, and it reminds me that life is not somewhere else, that running from where I am does not solve anything.

My life cracks open.

I stand in it,
careful not to run.

To stand and not run, to be where I am as faithfully as possible without having to escape the pain, to be with the incongruity of my life, to hold the tensions of my fragile existence . . . these are the invitations I sense as I move through this season and into the next season of soul.