Approaching Prayer in Recovery

In most 12-step meetings I attend, the Lord’s Prayer is said as we circle up and close the hour together. Rarely, if ever, have I walked away without a sense of unity and peace as the prayer concludes. I’ve often reflected on the different lines, what is being said, and the breadth of their meaning. While I am comfortable with the prayer, the uniqueness of the phrases has sparked a curiosity since the first time I encountered it. Let me explain —

I was raised in a home where prayers of repetition were thought to be offensive to God, so we had not been taught them. Following my parent’s divorce, we moved to rural Virginia, a beautiful area of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and lived with my maternal grandparents. The little school where I finished fifth grade and attended sixth grade had sixty-two children total. It was quite an adjustment from the Rocky Mountain home in Montana that I loved. Though I missed the West, I fondly recall those times as they would be the last days of my childhood. The calm before the storm of adolescence and familial mayhem, so to speak.

At any rate, I was quite surprised on the first day at this little mountain school when lunchtime came. Our teacher joined us at the table, and no one launched into their meals. Instead, Mrs. M. asked one of the boys to “Say grace.” Hands folded, heads bowed, and grace commenced, a repetitive prayer that went like this…

"God is good. God is great.

Let us thank Him for our food. Amen."

I sat there wide-eyed, like I’d landed on a foreign planet. Later that night, I replayed the scene as we ate supper and asked what I should do if it happened again. My grandmother’s chuckle as she sipped her Coca-Cola (another forbidden fruit from our childhood) caused me to raise an eyebrow while waiting for my mother’s answer. Needless to say, manners won over dogma. I was told to be polite and go along with it, and so I did. (There’s a whole lesson in that last sentence, but I’ll save that for another day.)

And so time marched on. I was in double digits before encountering the Lord’s Prayer and well into adulthood before I found it in Matthew, baffled that it was actually in the Good Book and authored by Jesus. How in the world was that bad? My upbringing, devout as it was to God and Christ, was what I would call, “Bible-lite”. Dumbfounded, I decided to change that. Spoiler alert—reading the Bible did not change my behavior, but it did begin to ground me in schools of thought that would be there when my bad behavior needed to change.

Though my study gave me an intellectual understanding, it did not give me a relationship with my Higher Power. One of the great joys of sobriety has been to find and develop a relationship that is unique and feels appropriate to me. Working the twelve steps stripped away all the trepidation and layers of uncomfortable restriction. Through that process, my affection for certain prayers of repetition has grown. I say one before I get out of bed every day without so much as a flinch. My stance is that any sort of communication with God is better than none at all. Here are a few prayers I find myself saying often —

Lord Father, thank you for giving me another day. I surrender my will and my life to you. Please guide and direct me in my day and my sobriety. Please show me how to live and serve those around me.

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God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

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Papa, I need help. You know what I don’t, please, just help.

To be fully transparent, prayer has been a huge part of my 2024. Every time I think I’ve been through the “hardest” experience of my life, life says, “Hold my root beer!” and levels up. To be blunt, 2024 has sucked. On the flip side, it has also been a year of extreme closeness to God. I can’t complain, but I do complain because I’m human.

Those around me are subject to bad jokes and dark humor as I move through chronic illness. Da hubs provides a balance to my inner Eeyore and has nicknamed me Hobbles! It's an offering to keep my ego in check, I’m sure. Prayer, on the other hand, anchors me to an eternal perspective. Without prayer, I would not know my worth, nor would I attribute blessings as more than mere turns in circumstance.

Where da hubs teases, God chases. Both allow me to see their love in the tiniest details. It’s a beautiful thing to come to know in the fibers of my being that my Higher Power has always been there, aware, and willing to teach me as I walk, wheel, limp, or hobble through life.

Up to this point, it all sounds pretty warm-fuzzy. Let’s pause for a reality check: praying is still hard. That little country prayer is sometimes all I’ve got between my will and my Higher Power’s. I usually don’t kneel. I’m not very formal. More often than not, I look like Lilo when she’s on the floor listening to Elvis. God takes me as I am and will take you as you are, too.

With all of this in mind, (and because my brain is like the proverbial hamster wheel), I want to break down the Lord’s Prayer in the next few blogs and analyze each phrase from a connection point of view. Please remember, I’m not a theologist or evangelist. I don’t claim to be an expert. I’m just a girl sitting at the fire ring sharing my thoughts based on what I experience, study, and feel from the Holy Spirit. There is plenty of room for your thoughts, too. In fact, I welcome them.

So, I’ll leave you for now to contemplate the first line, Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. (Matthew 6:9) See you next time at the fire ring!

—From the Fire Ring, Vol. 3, No. 7