prayer

Prayer has always been something that has been misunderstood in my life. It still is misunderstood and I only know that its misunderstood because I'm always wondering about it. Always feeling like I should pray more but never exactly sure how to. I've never had this innate desire to communicate with God and when I try to practice the discipline of prayer I wonder if I go outside and talk out loud, go somewhere alone and think to him, write prayers in a journal to him, or just sit in silence and hope for some communication. Or there is always the option of reading other peoples prayers to him like Psalms. Then I read things by Shauna Niequist in her book Bittersweet and I feel like although she isn't writing a letter to God, her thoughts and words are a prayer. Or how about my friend Ashton who just writes, sometimes spoken word, sometimes poems that are just real and raw and they strike something deep in me that official "bow your head and pray"ers do not. The times when I am overcome with grief, unknowing and confusion are the times that I have this gnawing inside of me and this big vacancy that is screaming at me that the only antidote is to pray. But I'm frustrated because I don't want it to always come to that point for me to pray. I want my life to be a prayer, I want my words to other people to be prayer, and the essence of my life to be worship. I want to communicate with God through everything, I want to hear him back and I hope that I don't always have to long for these things.


So I'm trying to figure out this prayer thing and the last thing I prayed for was that God would show me how to pray and preferably give me the desire to pray. It's all I've got.