How do you pray?

Prayer intimidated me as a kid. I didn’t know the word “intimidate” but I knew the feeling and to me it’s because I grew up in a neighborhood filled with religious people and I always felt religion was not something I could identify with. My mom didn’t have us baptized as children because she wanted to give us an option to choose what religion felt right for us as adults. My sister read her Bible every day and created a little prayer table between our beds. It wasn’t so much a table as a small shelving system to devote to prayer. The middle shelf held her Bible with a cross between the pages she was last reading. The top shelf had an artists version of Jesus on thin wood and another piece of thin wood with the Footprints story. I think she got them at the 99cent store. We cherished them.

I say we instead of she because I was a kid terrified of nighttime. It wasn’t so much terrified of the dark but terrified of the time of day where I’d be laying alone in bed and suddenly ghosts would appear, sometimes in the shape of humans, sometimes in the shape of orbs, sometimes they’d feel angry or hot like fire. It was terrifying. My sisters told me to draw crosses around my bed and so I did. My bunk bed was filled with little red crosses and I considered it protected in that way.

My anxiety going to sleep didn’t disappear with the hand drawn crosses though. It made me feel like I couldn’t be touched by the ghosts but it didn’t make me feel any better about their presence. So my sister took it upon herself to teach me to pray.

She’d handwrite little prayers that I’d fold in my Claire’s Accessories keepsake box. She let me keep the box on her prayer table. She lent me her cross and I’d hold it while I slept whenever I was scared (always.)

As I’ve gotten older, prayer has been an open conversation with God. I don’t kneel anymore. I just speak to Him through my day as I would a parent and I know He’s listening.

A common question I get when spirit tells my clients to pray is, “but how? Like what do I say?” And that’s when I realized it may be intimidating for others too.

I thought I’d start us off, “Holy Father, thank you for...” personalize the message. You got this❤