Prayer in the face of deep pain

There are questions that I encounter as a pastor that haunt me. I’m not necessarily thinking about the usual suspects here. Questions about the existence of God or why we suffer or the challenge of pluralism or the historicity of this or that biblical story or the conundrums of interpreting this or that passage or doctrine. These all represent familiar enough terrain and present their own challenges to faith. But the questions I’m thinking about today are much more personal in nature.

I’m thinking of questions like “I’m afraid to die—does this mean my faith is weak?” or “What do I do with my crushing loneliness?” or “Why are people so mean to me? Is something wrong with me?” These are the kinds of questions to which the first (and sometimes last) response is often just a sad shared silence. This is life and faith beyond abstraction, beyond “belief system,” beyond words like ritual and shared practices and wisdom. These questions emerge out of a wound, not an idle curiosity or even an existential hunger. I am more comfortable with abstraction. I suspect many of us are.

The latest haunting question came recently at the jail. A young indigenous woman leaned forward with tears in her eyes and interrupted more prosaic streams of conversation with this: “Can I ask a question? I don’t know how to say it, but … I really wanna know. How do I get unstuck? I’m so tired of making the same mistakes, going back to the same people and problems. I don’t want to, but … So, I don’t know … I guess I just wanna know how to get unstuck.” Her words dripped with urgency, longing, dread, and pain.