“We’re going to inject the contrast dye now. You’re going to feel warm. Don’t move. Don’t swallow.”
I was in the emergency room getting an MRI of my brain. I woke up that morning with a bit of a headache, but it had intensified. By the time I reached the hospital, I could barely see. I was so dizzy I could barely walk. The doctors thought I was having my first-ever migraine, but wanted a scan to make sure we weren’t looking at anything more serious.
So I found myself in the imaging room with gruff technicians, my body on a narrow bed, and my head in the MRI machine. I was trying my best not to move, but the beeps and chirps of the machine made me flinch. Tears were running down my cheeks and into my ears. I was scared and alone. I wanted to go home.
Then, unbidden, lyrics from a well-worn song flooded my mind.
Your eyes see me when I am hidden
Your eyes see me when I am broken-hearted
Your eyes see me when I am heavy
Your eyes see me when I cannot lift my head.
When I call to You, Lord
You answer me, You answer me.
In that moment of fear, I needed to pray, but couldn’t. I so badly wanted to be a stalwart Christian, able to summon faith and fervor in any situation. I want eloquent, spontaneous prayers to spill from my heart no matter the occasion. But I’m often not fervent. I’m not often eloquent. Sometimes I can’t find the spiritual gumption to string two prayerful words together. My zeal for prayer ebbs and flows. My commitment and stamina comes and goes, sometimes from fear, like that day in the hospital. But honestly, sometimes from apathy too.
I used to think that good, pious prayer looked like pouring my heart out to God, in my own unique words. It can look like that, but it doesn’t always have to. Now I know that prayer is so much broader and more expansive than I imagined. It’s breath and listening. It’s praying treasured liturgies handed down by generations of faithful Christians. Prayer is solitary and communal, it’s celebration and lament. It’s movement and music.
I’m not cut off from God, unable to communicate on the hard days when I can’t form my own prayers. His love is too vast for that. When I was getting my MRI, God put the lyrics of a familiar song into my head to give me words to hang on to. It’s like He said, “Here are familiar words. They’re someone else’s, but they can be yours too, because they’re true.”
If you’re finding it hard to pray today, try praying the lyrics of this song. Or try prayerfully reading a Psalm, or asking a prayer partner to pray for you. There are moments when we need to pray, but can’t find the words. If that’s you today, I pray God will give you the exact words to pray.
“Here are familiar words. They’re someone else’s, but they can be yours too, because they’re true.”
