Help Thanks Wow: Three Essential Prayers

by Anne Lamott

Prayer is private, even when we pray with others. It is communication from the heart to that which surpasses understanding.

Prayer means that, in some unique way, we believe we’re invited into a relationship with someone who hears us when we speak in silence.

Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up.

There’s freedom in hitting bottom, in seeing that you won’t be able to save or rescue your daughter, her spouse, his parents, or your career, relief in admitting you’ve reached the place of great unknowing. This is where restoration can begin, because when you’re still in the state of trying to fix the unfixable, everything bad is engaged: the chatter of your mind, the tension of your physiology, all the trunks and wheel-ons you carry from the past. It’s exhausting, crazy-making.

I ask that God’s will be done, and I mostly sort of mean it.

I have seen miracles, although they always take too long to make themselves known, if you ask me.

If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little.

the three things I cannot change are the past, the truth, and you.

Most good, honest prayers remind me that I am not in charge, that I cannot fix anything, and that I open myself to being helped by something, some force, some friends, some something.

What’s the difference between you and God? God never thinks he’s you.

We learn through pain that some of the things we thought were castles turn out to be prisons, and we desperately want out, but even though we built them, we can’t find the door.

We religious types, even those who detest organized religion, pray for deeper faith and a greater sense of oneness with God.