I spent the past few days in South Carolina for my cousin’s wedding and I have some observations about my experience with prayer during the ceremony.
I was raised to believe in God, but I didn’t have what I what consider to be faith. As a child, prayer meant bowing my head and closing my eyes while someone else talked. I wasn’t comfortable saying, “Amen.”
When I was about 16 years old or so, I chose Christianity. My prayers became heartfelt.
When Christianity no longer appealed to me, I went through a few different prayer styles. The first was something like respectful defiance. I would not lower my head during prayer, but remain silent while others offered prayer.
The second was respectful silence. On the outside, I appeared to be praying like everyone else. On the inside, my mind was quiet.
The third style was real prayer, but I refused to think of it as prayer. I bowed my head and silently offered my wishes or energy or whatever to the prayer, but not to God.
During the prayer on Saturday, I had a new experience. When I was asked to pray to God to bless my cousin Ryan and his new wife, I did. I offered my prayers to Ryan’s God because he asked me to.
And it felt right, but I’m not sure how to explain why. I guess I feel that even though Christianity is not my religion, I want to honor and respect Ryan’s choosing of the Christian God to be the catalyst between my prayer and Ryan’s marriage.
To say it another way, I’m going to offer my good wishes/energy/prayer to Ryan anyway. And because he chooses to receive his blessing from God, then it is God who should be the one to receive and use my prayer.
I feel calm and grateful for the opportunity to let go of the bitterness I’ve felt toward God and Christianity for so long. My understanding of the Divine has risen to a new level because I’ve forgiven God.
I’ve gained understanding of Truth and of multiple Truths.