Swim 'til you drown; Know that we all fall down.

Prayer sucks.


But only because I'm not good at it, because it's a struggle.


In reality, prayer is "more powerful than any force of nature." And like all disciplines, it takes practice, dedication.


If my hunch is right, it's something like painting: you wander around, prepping canvases and arranging paint tubes and making fussy little charcoal sketches and shifting the lighting and selecting the right background music. You hesitantly mix a color or two, touch brush to canvas, mix another color, steel yourself against walking away, and continue to touch the canvas. And suddenly, it's five hours later and your canvas is bursting with color and your heart is so involved that you don't realize the music went off, the sun went down, and you missed dinner.


When I pray, I pray for this and that, mention all my family members, bring up my singleness, and remind myself of God's sovereignty and grace, then wander into another list of little things. I know that if I were to paint every day for hours at a time, not only would it get easier to pick up the brush and touch it to canvas, but my paintings would become more structured, more inviting, more artistic. And I get the feeling that if I could just learn to pray more often, every day for hours at a time even, prayer would be less like a visit to a nursing home patient and more like painting, or making love, or a white water kayaking trip.


I don't know this for sure, but this is what I hear some people saying, and a voice in my heart says, "That is true."