When There Are No Words

Some time after 2020, in the middle of the deconstruction I never meant to have, I lost the words to pray. It was a devastating thing for me to experience—losing access to communication with God, to my own heart. It was the final removal of the words that I had been losing slowly over many years of masking and fitting myself into boxes that did not suit me.

I was lost in a hormonal flood of postpartum hormones mixed with perimenopause (the particular joys of birth in your late 30s). There were a series of losses all in a row, starting with my mother-in-law. Grief was all too familiar.

Everything I had tried to hold together fell apart. I knew I needed to find my way back to myself again so I went very base level.

What feels good?

What does not ask me to be anything else but what I am?

What can be done in the stolen moments or while children play beside you?

I began to paint, and dance. Looking back, I can see that I was still praying without the words. My own strokes were guiding me home.

When we were lost without a diagnosis or support for my son, I danced with Body Groove each morning. I listened to the music and let it speak the words for me. Sometimes my kids joined me. Other times I was alone in the sweetness of the early morning. I played Amazing Grace at the end of each session, letting my arms move with the sorrow and the hope of it.

When we moved to our new house, I began to paint. The first painting helped me to process the herculean moves that it had taken to accomplish that task.

The others acted like a lighthouse guiding me back to the deeper waters of myself, helping me to name the things I wanted, to bring them into being.

As my daughter finished kindergarten last May, it brought with it some big feelings. Even though she is my youngest child, she was the first child who had a traditional kindergarten year, and she was full of feelings about its end. As her graduation approached, the song “I Hope You Dance” became the earworm that looped in my mind, so I painted it. I thought of my sweet girl with each stroke, envisioned her at all the stages of her life. It remains the prayer I pray for her as I look at it each day, hanging on the living room wall. Is it the finest art? Of course not. But it is filled with love and hope.

I haven’t painted as many canvases these days, but I realized I am still praying through the paint and creativity. I have been making collage cards that I will use for my writings or send to someone that I get the sense might need it. I took a little watercolor course, and began to paint the flowers onto cards that I could send to loved ones. My sweet friend just lost her brother, so I painted her a poppy, sending love through each stroke, believing that it would reach her across the miles. ( It actually will–I mailed the card, but the prayers within the strokes are what I mean).

When I allow my writing to become a judgement, I can switch my tool to something softer, and find my way back. Does it always work? That likely depends on the metric.

But I will say that a prayer sent out from the heart, even if it has no words, has never been in vain.