The holy instant does not come from your little willingness alone. It is always the result of your small willingness combined with the unlimited power of God’s will.
- A Course In Miracles
I used to think prayer had rules.
I thought it was something you did correctly. The right words. The right posture. The right amount of reverence.
Growing up, prayer often looked like folded hands, kneeling in a pew, and memorized Hail Marys and Our Fathers. Somewhere along the way, I quietly concluded that God must prefer polished prayers over messy ones.
I’m not sure anyone explicitly taught me that. It's just what I came to believe.
These days, my prayers look very different.
Sometimes they have no words at all. Sometimes they sound like ugly crying on my bedroom floor. Sometimes they are whispered into my pillow after I've completely run out of answers.
Sometimes they are nothing more than, Help.
I've learned that some of the holiest prayers don't come from the mind. They come from the gut. From the place that has finally stopped pretending it can carry everything alone.
There have been more times than I can count over the last few years when I've reached the end of myself.
The plans stopped working. The strategies stopped working. The positive thinking stopped working. Even my own understanding stopped working.
And strangely, that was where life began opening.
I would find myself flat on my belly on the floor, tears soaking into the carpet, with nothing left to offer except a tiny willingness to be shown another way.
Not certainty. Not confidence.
Just willingness.
It reminds me of the verse about faith the size of a mustard seed.
For years I thought that passage was asking me to have more faith. Now I wonder if it was never about quantity at all.
Maybe it was simply saying that the smallest opening is enough.
A crack. A whisper. A trembling, I'm willing.
Maybe that's all Love has ever needed.
I've discovered that surrender isn't giving up.
It's giving over.
It's loosening my grip on the belief that I have to orchestrate every outcome, solve every problem, predict every future, or carry every burden.
It's allowing myself to be carried.
That hasn't meant life suddenly became easy. It has meant that I no longer feel like I'm facing it alone.
I've started to trust something that feels impossible to explain and yet undeniable to experience.
That there is a current beneath life. That I don't always have to swim upstream. That perhaps grace has been carrying me long before I ever noticed.
When I stop fighting it, I can feel it.
Not every day. Not perfectly.
But enough.
Enough to keep taking the next step. Enough to believe that I am held, even when I can't yet see where the path leads. Enough to whisper another prayer.
Not because I've found all the answers.
But because I've learned that willingness is often enough.
Just a speck of it.
Sometimes that's all it takes for everything to begin changing.