Why Prayer Isn't Like God's Gumball Machine

answering a reader's question

Dear Nadia

How do you conceptualize ‘prayer’ outside of the stereotypical on your knees, shopping list prayer taught to many children!? – Martin

Dear Martin,

When becoming a mother in the 1960s, Peggy Bolz learned she had RH factor; a condition in which her body developed antibodies against the blood of her baby. These antibodies grow in number with each subsequent pregnancy, so one baby was a blessing, two was not recommended and three wasn’t considered possible. Which is why, after my sister and brother were born, Peggy was instructed to be on birth control for the rest of her life.

Then one day Peggy walked by my sister Barbara’s room, and heard the sound of a 5-year old praying fervently that God give her a baby sister. To which Peggy muttered under her breath, “Um, not happening, kid”.

And yet, here I am. Peggy’s 3^rd baby. And in some ways, Barbara’s first.

Last year several of my friends prayed to have babies. They tried the low tech way. Nothing. They prayed to God that maybe the slightly higher tech way would work. It did not. They prayed their insurance would pay for IVF, which it did, but still, no baby. They prayed maybe it would work the second time, or the third. One got pregnant only to miscarry. My friends endured countless injections and doctor appointments, they spent all the money and said all the prayers, and did all the things and still, heartbreakingly, unimaginably, infuriatingly, none of it worked.

I have always loved the notion that the prayers of my 5-year old sister were “answered”.

But I find the extension of the very same idea difficult to stomach: that the prayers of my friends were ignored.

So yes Martin, unless we are all willing to think God capricious and cruel, we must claim that the shopping list prayer thing is kind of bullshit. How in the world could we ever make sense of why some people have their prayer requests filled and others do not.

And yet, I myself still ask.

I ask God for the provision of what I want, and for the extinction of what I fear.

I do.

But Martin, I no longer believe that if God is good, I will be provided what’s lovely and protected from what’s ugly. Nor do I believe that what happens by chance is a referendum on my goodness and deserving.

Even though the following violates our innate sense of justice, the fact is: sometimes good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. And when it does, we scan the scene for blame, because humans love pattern recognition. But this world we live in isn’t always governed by recognizable patterns that lend themselves to cause-and-effect conclusions. Sometimes, maybe even most times, there is not a satisfying answer to the question of “why” bad things happen, so we continue to just make shit up. We blame God or blame ourselves or blame others so that we can pretend it all could have been different - that we could have had control over the uncontrollable. Because the alternative is terrifying: shit just happens.

So even though I don’t believe in the gumball machine idea, that if I put a shiny quarter of prayer and righteousness into God’s vending machine that a shiny round gumball of “blessings” will drop into my hand, I still pray.

I pray because I have fears and longings and concerns and gratitudes and complaints that are best not left unexpressed.  And so I hold these up to God, I repeat them in my mind and ponder them on my walks; I whisper them into my pillow, and press them into the soil; I write them on ribbons; I say them in the single, choppy syllables managed between sobs. And I believe that God somehow catches them and will not let a single one land unheld in God’s divine knowing. Not because God is good and I am good so I get what I ask for, but because God was, is, and will be - meaning that God is already present in the future I am fearing and already loving me through the grief of the bad thing happening, and already and always ready to comfort and sustain me. God abides all around me even in times of collapse, even in times of boredom, even in times of selfishness, even in times of effervescence when I forget to be grateful. I know this to be true even when I do not “feel” it.

Martin, I hope you can count as prayer that which you have already been doing. Because there is just more holiness around us than we have been led to believe.

There is much to say of prayer. These are just what came to mind on this October morning.

Love, Nadia

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Question: is there something in your life that you count as “prayer” that isn’t, as our friend Martin says, the stereotypical on your knees, shopping list prayer taught to many children?