On Prayer

Letters to a Leaving Mormon: Chapter Six

On Prayer

Prayer is still something I miss. There are nights still when I can’t sleep and I turn onto my knees in bed, my cheek against the warm pillow. It can be painful to sit in silence, my mind watching, like listening to wind in the trees through a window. I don’t know what to say in my prayers, and even more so, I don’t know who I am saying it to. Almost always, I turn over and lay on my back, listening to the hum of my sleeping house. My children in the other room, my husband next to me, the dog occasionally whimpering in her dreams. Shadow leaves dance on the ceiling, a streetlight just beyond the trees. In my neighborhood, so many prayers were sent up to a God tonight. Mine was not one of them. 

And even though there is some sadness in losing that comfort, sadness is not the only feeling I am left with. It’s okay that my desires, worries, gratitude, thoughts, sins, and troubles are not riding a wind current toward the heavens tonight, or in the morning, and maybe they never will again. It’s not that God didn’t answer my prayers when I was a Mormon. He did, often, even daily. I wanted to see the answers, and I did. There are many cycles in Mormonism that perpetuate gratitude and joy and prayer was one of them.  I am re-inventing what this means, and reconfiguring those attempts daily.