Why Can't I Say This Out Loud?

I try to pray each night before I go to bed.

My prayers are a mix of the standard stuff - Our Father, Hail Mary, Serenity Prayer - and more open ended “discussion” with God. I tend to be more personal when I have something weighty on my mind, and fall back to routine when prayer feels like a drag that night. But no matter how I’m feeling, I always pray inside my head. I don’t need Anne listening in.

The downside of silent, pre-bedtime prayers is that I tend to fall asleep in the middle of my conversation with God. Many nights, it ends up being little more than counting sheep. A way to increase my drowsiness. And that doesn’t feel right.

So this week I decided to give morning prayer a shot. It’s the one time in the day when I’m alone enough to pray out loud. And there’s (hopefully) no chance of me falling asleep.

But when I tried praying on Wednesday morning, I still didn’t pray at full volume. I whispered. My voice cracked a few times.

Who am I whispering for?

On paper it’s ridiculous. There should be no difference between talking silently to God, and speaking to him at full volume.

If I pray in my head, then what I’m saying doesn’t have to be entirely real. I think a lot of crazy things in my head. But if I pray out loud, then that means I actually think that prayer “works” and I can talk to God. If not I’m just a crazy person talking to himself.

Plus, if I’m actually talking to God, then what I say better be good. And on Wednesday it wasn’t. Based on what I heard myself say, I’m a self-centered, inarticulate moron and am wasting his time.

Over the past few years, I have built my faith from the outside in. First I developed the discipline to go to Mass, then I got confirmed, then I started exploring the Gospel and writing this newsletter, and only then did I start really trying to pray in a personal way.

Imagine approaching anything else this way. Imagine running the NYC marathon before ever running a mile alone. It wouldn’t make any sense.

But faith is the most intensely intimate thing we can do as people, and intimacy is what the Gospel asks of us. I’m just not there yet.

“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life.”

See you next week.

Emmett

John 3:16-18

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.
Whoever believes in him will not be condemned,
but whoever does not believe has already been condemned,
because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.