The feeling I no longer pray for
One of the reasons I left my childhood faith tradition is that I didn’t feel what I was supposed to feel.
Every so often, I pull out my old prayer journals and look for patterns or trajectories. What have I prayed for consistently? What requests have I stopped making? How have I approached God differently over time?
I skimmed a few journals recently and made a discovery that surprised me: over the past couple of years, I’ve stopped asking to feel God’s presence. This is surprising because I spent years begging God to show up in palpable ways. I grew up in a faith tradition that put a lot of stock in this sort of experience. Most of my early prayers were for sacred sensation: God’s arms around me, God’s face shining down on me, God’s power thrilling me. For years, my litmus test for a mature faith was affective: Did I feel God in my everyday life? Did I sense God’s love, feel God’s forgiveness, experience God’s joy?
One of the reasons I left my childhood tradition is that I didn’t feel what I was supposed to feel. At least, not often, and not in ways I could depend on. Though I prayed fervently for felt experiences of God, such experiences by and large eluded me. (Hence the pages of tear-stained ink in my journals.) Predictably, this led to guilt, shame, doubt, and jealousy. Surely, I thought, I was doing something wrong. Surely I didn’t have enough faith.
