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Do you pray? I do.

And lately I have been thinking about prayer, and praying, and have noticed a bit of a shift in my perspective.

I’ve discussed at length here, my own experience with religion and faith (click here & here for a refresher), and lack thereof. Though from the time I was a little girl, I have always said a prayer before bed – maintaining a relationship with the only form of God I had ever known.

For me, God was one who listened and took care of things if I prayed hard and was grateful. Or that was my hope at least.

As an adult, I too prayed, though much more sporadically. The experience of having my first child required a lot of prayer. He was born early and experienced heart issues – it was a scary experience for a young first time mom. So I prayed, and so did everyone else, and thankfully he was okay. This was almost six years ago, and there has been no shortage of prayers spoken or thought since.

Now however, I don’t see God the same as I used to. God is no longer intimidating and out of reach. There is no more fear associated with my beliefs and my decision to embrace many religious views and ideas. From this new space I have found that Prayer feels quite different too.

Now when I pray, I often times find myself sincerely expressing gratitude, and I rarely pray for a certain outcome for a situation. Instead, I pray for help with feeling less fear about a situation (fear is my Mount Everest), because I trust innately that it will all work out.

And it feels better too, like it works. The fear dissipates and the faith kicks in.

Maybe this is truly what is meant by the words, “have faith” – which has always seemed much easier said than done to me.

I have felt a huge shift since I began to approach praying from a different perspective, and I would love to hear about your own experiences with prayer and faith. Do you have that steady faith that I wrote of? Do you find that fear and worry take over? Please share below!