Listening Prayer
Warning: This post gets kinda weird.
For those of you (like me) who don’t know what listening prayer is, it is as it sounds. Instead of talking at or to God, it is basically about sitting silently and meditatively, listening to God. The way we did it that night was that one person (there were four of us) stated their prayer request. Then we sat silently, listening to see if we heard anything from God about that request, waiting to hear the still small voice, waiting for a vision, waiting to sense an impression, waiting for something. Weird right? At least, I totally thought it was.
I was nervous. I hated feeling vulnerable, and asking for prayer and praying out loud always made me feel exposed, a bit ridiculous and a little like a fraud, using all the Christian lingo but maintaining my emotional distance. I was already anxious and a jumble of twisted up emotions over the woman I had just met in Colorado and now I had to share and pray with virtual strangers (okay, one virtual stranger). This was the absolute last thing I wanted to do.
Anyway, I grew more and more nervous as my time to share arrived. My voice was shaky and my heart was beating fast. I tried to be vague, asking for help making some positive changes like being more productive, and mentioning my desire to love someone and be loved by someone. It was kind of a vague, weird request. That’s all I said. Something totally NOT about my feelings for women, my shame, etc. Then we closed our eyes. As silence filled the room, and I mutely prayed to God to help me, just to please help me, I felt my heartbeat slow, felt my breathing grow steadier and felt my body begin rocking back and forth. No thoughts came to me.
I don’t know how else to explain this except that it felt like God was holding me, rocking me back and forth.
The internal turmoil in my heart and mind grew quieter as I sat there with God. Yes, strange stuff.
Afterwards, we went around the group, each person sharing what they saw or heard: thoughts, a voice, images, etc. I was skeptical. This seemed a little wacko, a little too out there for this evangelical. Jessica wrote down what everyone said on note cards. I still have mine so I’m not making this up. And a couple of them I could never forget.
Jessica heard God tell her that that he loves me, he sees my tears and hears my prayers, he knows the desires of my heart and he will take care of me always. The effect these words had on me was immediate. Oh, these life-giving words. Tears streamed down my face. I mean streams of tears. I wasn’t sob crying but the tears were steadily flowing, a healthy current of tears. Was God telling me he saw me as I was, with all my messy sexuality, and he still loved me? That my pain and tears had not gone unnoticed? That I was completely seen and known AND still loved? Could this be?
And then my friend Laurie was up. She had seen an image of pinks, blues and reds with hearts. She said that there was commotion in me, a going back and forth with unsettledness. I started to squirm. What the frick? Did she know that I was attracted to women? Had she detected it?
Even though her vision made me uncomfortable (were the others going to connect the dots?), her words brought further confirmation to me that God was telling me he did indeed see me, even gay me, and he loved me anyway.
I had not breathed a word about my attractions to any of them, and unbeknownst to them, they had said the most meaningful words I had ever heard in my life. I believed (still believe) God was addressing my same-sex attractions and desires. God was telling me he saw my shame and hurt and I was STILL his precious daughter. He saw me. My tears had not gone unnoticed. He was THE witness to my hurt and isolation and shame. He saw it all. He still loved me, despite my sexuality. He loved me.
This experience did not mark the end of my own shame or my fear that I would never have a relationship with a woman. But, whenever I began to feel really low in the years that followed, I would pull out those note cards and reread them and those words made me feel better, reassured me that I was seen and known and still loved.
