Stephanie Heidel, owner of Foundation Mindset, is an author and educator with a passion for mental health and holistic wellness.

I have good news and bad news about what I have discovered about prayer. If you are not a fan of bad news, you can just skip that section of this blog. But if you are brave enough to read the whole thing, you may just learn a thing or two that will help you grow in your spiritual journey. I will start by sharing as always that I am simply on this journey and would love to share what I am learning but do not have any of this figured out. I believe all our lives are a journey and that we don’t see the actual beautiful destination until we meet our Lord. Until then, I hope that what I have learned about prayer will be helpful to someone.

Good News

Prayer works. I cannot explain it. I don’t understand it. It simply works. I believe this with all my heart. I have been on a prayer journey for as long as I can remember, and it has taken me on some pretty wild explorations of what prayer should look like. I would try the latest theological belief I heard and run with that believing that if I prayed that way, the Lord would hear my prayer. When I was very young, I was taught little rhyming prayers that I would repeat. Mealtimes were when you say, “God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food.” Bedtimes were for “Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” As a young teenager, I was told that there was a very specific way that I must pray for God to hear me. (a story for another day) Throughout my young adult life, I would read different books on prayer and often felt like I must be doing something wrong because they just didn’t seem to be getting answered. A few years ago, I read War Room by Chris Fabry and convinced myself that I needed to turn a closet in my house into a prayer room, so I did. It was complete with pillows, little fairy lights, pray cards, pens, a Bible, and little clothes pins and strings for attaching all my prayers. Fast forward to today, I do something even crazier. I just talk to Him. That is all. I do often journal my prayers as well, but I mainly just chat with Him.  The good news is that every method I described worked. God did not care how I spoke with Him. Why did I keep searching for new ways to pray? Why did I not see that the prayers were working? I had this silly idea that for a prayer to be answered, it must be answered exactly as I thought it should be. Here is the best news so far, God was answering my prayers in a much better way than what I was asking. It seems so silly looking back. I was like a child asking to stop the car so I could go on one slide at a playground we passed by, completely unaware that the father was driving the car to the largest amusement park in the world. My heavenly father was hearing my prayers all those years and preparing so much more than I even knew to ask for.

Bad News

Although prayer works, it can often feel like it is not working. And those feelings in the waiting period can be brutal. I am talking about years of pain that you can’t seem to pray away. That is some pretty bad news. As you pray for that one ride down the slide at the tiny playground over and over again, just keep reminding yourself that your Father in heaven is building an entire amusement park for you so have patience in the waiting.