The Prayers We Know By Heart
How our first language can carry us through
Bless us, O Lord,
And these thy gifts
Which we are about to receive
From thy bounty, through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Funny thing about those words, the grace-before-meals I’ve prayed ten thousand times.
They show up in the strangest places.
On the nights before my children’s birthdays each year, I wind up praying these words silently as I kiss them goodnight. Edging on the cusp of another year, holding the hope of the new gifts they are about to receive, the new gift of their changing self I am about to receive.
When I was pregnant with our twins and their lives were threatened in-utero, I found those words coming to my lips all day long as their too-soon birth date approached. These gifts, which we were about to receive. Which we had to let go.
I pray these words all the time now. Before I eat, sure. But also before a retreat, whether I’m leading it or making it. Before a big project starts. Before a new season begins.
This is a hidden gift of prayer-by-heart, a strange blessing I could not see in my younger years when I rolled eyes at rote routines, bland and unoriginal, boring to a teenager.
Not just that prayer can still spring to your lips when words fail, when the phone call comes or the diagnosis arrives or the accident happens, when you stand by the hospital bed or the graveside and you don’t know what else to say. But that any words you pray over and over again come to be written on the underside of your heart, engraved in your cells.
You don’t lose them. They grow in depth. You discover hidden truth. They carry you through.
(This sounds a lot like marriage. A lot like love.)
Lately I am praying these words often, on the cusp of a big new change in my work, one that I’ll share more about soon. This prayer of grace (in all senses of the word) holds me fast on the teetering edge between old and new, known and unknown, comfort and risk.
The words I’ve prayed ten thousand times since childhood are leading me into a new chapter of adulthood, where I get to both lead and get out of the way. What an enormous gift to receive.
Maybe there’s a prayer you know by heart, something short or sweet, even embarrassing for an adult to admit they still carry close to the chest. (Right now might be a good time to share that I still whisper Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here when I find myself wrestling with terrors unknown in the night’s dark hours. Makes no sense and makes all the sense.)
Maybe you’ve heard how people with dementia can sometimes find the prayers they knew by heart, that when a priest intones, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” the patients in the memory care unit still make the sign of the cross—by instinct, by heart.
Prayers like this are part of our first language, our lost language or our love language: the words taught to us when we were young.
Over time this gift becomes grace, helping us hold fast to any words we can pray by heart. The ones we return to when the bottom falls out (which feels like now) or when we lose our way (which might also be now).
When we flounder for words, we fall back upon the earliest and most ancient. Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts. Even and especially when thy gifts are hidden and thy ways mysterious.
Give us the words to pray when we have none—or help us to see the strange, sparkling shine of the words we have never lost.
The hope we are always about to receive.
I have something new for you on prayer that I’ll be sharing very soon. Stay tuned for a special announcement this Tuesday, Aug. 9th. And thank you all for your prayers that have been carrying me through this new chapter!
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Find my books here: Everyday Sacrament | Grieving Together | Prayers for Pregnancy & Birth | To Bless Our Callings | Living Your Discipleship
This is simple, so edifying. Thank you.
Love this.