By: Annie
She doesn’t play the game; she’s more of a coach.
What my beloved supervisor was trying to illustrate (while inadvertently offending me) is my role here on the blog. Every post you see here, uploaded infrequently, has gone through a rigorous editing and screening process. Initial edits are made to weed out spelling and grammatical errors, but then it goes through a round (or multiple rounds) of edits to improve style and content. I will send a blog back to its author asking them to expand on something they mentioned in passing, or send it to a volunteer editor telling them to forego grammatical rules because they lost the author’s “voice.” In essence, I don’t write my own material but I can help make yours so much better.
Now this is where the cliché question would normally go and here’s mine: So what am I doing here blogging? The simple truth: because someone said the content here on the blog wasn’t of interest to them and because being called out as not “playing the game” felt like a serious life challenge. So over the next little while, I’d like to share a bit about my personal faith journey.
Life’s been hard to pin down these last few months because of a number of things. New job, new small group, new friends, new places, and new experiences; all with one thing in common: change. As a creature of habit and a recovering perfectionist/control freak, it was terrifying because a routine of 3 years got completely turned upside-down and inside-out.
In order to cope, I spent about 3 months reading and re-reading the Book of Psalm daily. In the midst of a particularly dramatic change in life, rituals and habits became lifelines. Repeatedly reading through Psalm gave me a place to be on a regular basis, something constructive to focus on instead of fear, the comfort of knowing someone else felt what I felt, and a life-changing perspective on prayer.
During times when David was on the run for his life or an anonymous psalmist experienced loss, they ended their psalms thanking and praising God for the imminent victory or rescue or justice being done. I often wonder if this was a mantra of sorts just to get through a difficult time. Maybe in that instance, they really didn’t feel like God was there protecting them or even questioned His existence if something this horrific was allowed to take place. Having been through similar experiences where God did come through for them, maybe they repeated words they didn’t necessarily feel or believe to be true until the words sank in. Like me, repeatedly reading through the psalms, maybe something would sink in. Eventually, something did.
Like all things with our faith, it all comes back to the Cross. As Eryn-Faye reminded us, Scripture tells us that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, NIV). In the same vein, Jer mentioned in his blog that knowing we don’t have to be perfect is freeing. For me, it was freeing to know that I didn’t need to have eloquent words, my own words, or any words at all, to come to God in prayer. For a while, these psalms were my prayers because I couldn’t bring myself to pray. Psalms of praise were particularly hard, but in total submission and vulnerability, I told God, “I don’t want to pray and I don’t believe in these words, but I’m going to say them anyway because I should.” More often than not (and “not” happened more than I’d like to admit), praying gave me perspective and peace where I needed it most. In a counterintuitive yet powerful way, praying out of obligation and growing from that experience affirms that God loves us and will redeem us no matter where we are in our faith.
For more resources on prayer, see “The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers” by Henri J.M. Nouwen and “Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?” by Philip Yancey.