Learning to Pray--Part One

So I'm reading a book about prayer, which means I'm trying to pray more and pray differently. Parts of it have been good--the parts about how my prayers don't have to be fancy and formal, they can just be real and messy and honest. How I don't have to dress up my life and my heart for Jesus. How I don't even have to try and put it together myself first before I come to Him. Because the truth is I've been feeling rather unputtogether lately and it's been rather freeing to just go to Christ and say, "Here's my mess. It needs some sorting through, and I'm not sure how to do it and quite frankly I'm not feeling really up to the task." It's nice to just honestly lay out how I'm feeling instead of just praying about how I think I should feel. Because the truth is that those two things are rarely ever the same lately.

For example, I know I should be feeling this way: "I'm so thankful for my job and so thankful that I got a contract for next year. With the state of the economy right now, there are plenty of people without jobs who would love to have one. I'm thankful for my job because I work with some amazing people. I'm thankful for my job because I get to have relationships with students at such an important time in their lives; I get to help them as they are just starting out their journeys figuring out who they are. I'm thankful for my job because I get to make 49 students read one of my favorite books and discuss it with them."

But really, I'm feeling this way: "12 days. Really. I don't know if I can make it 12 days. And if I do, I think there are some of my students who may not."

So, I like that I can wake up in the mornings and instead of saying something like, "Jesus thank you so much for my wonderful job. I'm so thankful and can't wait to go to work. What a tremendous blessing my job is. Thank you for each of my students and the opportunity I have today to show them your love." I can say something like this, "Jesus, I want to go back to sleep. I'm not too thrilled about going to school and kind of wish that you would fast forward to June 3. I know you probably won't do that, but it's possible, so if you could make that happen, it would be great."

I know the first one is how I should be feeling, but if I prayed that, it would be a big fat lie. I could pray something to the effect of "make my heart feel this way," but most mornings I'm not even in a place where that's my number one desire, so saying I wanted that wouldn't be totally truthful either. By saying my second prayer, I'm being honest. And while it might not be churchy and "church-correct," it makes me feel so much better knowing that my feelings, my sinfulness, and my helplessness have been laid out on the table and I'm not going to go through the day trying to hide them underneath some fake super-Christian front I'm putting on for God. It's actually helpful because it puts the fact that I'm not able to do life on my own right in my face. It puts me up close with my inadequacy, takes away any hint of any part of me being able to be good on it's own. It frees me up to rely on Christ.

At first it sounds like this might just let me focus on the negative, but for me it does the opposite. It puts my focus on Christ. It reminds me I need Him. And it keeps me thinking throughout the day that all good things are coming from Him because when I'm honest about my shortcomings, I know they"re not coming from me.