I’ve started a daily readings process with a good friend of mine. Every morning, we receive a scripture reading (the same each day for a week), and at the end of each e-mail is a simple reflection question for the day.

After spending the week with a passage that reflects on the nature of true prayer, today’s question asked:

What is your simple prayer today?

I’ve been noticing how my simple prayer keeps changing throughout the day so far.

My first simple prayer, upon waking up this morning, was, “Meet me.” I had a hard time getting going in my day and didn’t have much strength or energy to get into the day, but the thought of being met by Jesus at my desk was a great comfort. 

Then, as I sat at my desk for a while, reading and thinking, I kept bumping up against a new prayer:

“I’m low.” 

It was a prayer of request for him to hear the truth of my experience right now.

I’ve continued to live in a season of aloneness with my life’s work, and it’s been quite acute and painful, even though Jesus has been showing me some of his purposes that he’s working through it all. Also, my schedule has changed quite a bit in the last couple weeks, and I haven’t found my center of gravity with the new adjustments. It’s left me feeling pretty discombobulated and perplexed. And then, of course, you already know about the conversations I’ve been having with myself and with God about my body this week. That is all so new and still so mystifying to me.

So, I’m low. So many changes and unanswered questions leaving me low. And my strong desire was for Jesus to know that, for him to see it. 

And now that he’s seen it, my simple prayer is that he would be with me in it. 

It’s doesn’t feel quite comfortable to sit with the lowness, the unanswered questions, the unfinished feeling of so much right now. But, taking my cue from yesterday’s post, there’s no energy around the idea of gearing up and making it all come together with some strength I simply do not have.

The invitation, instead, is to let Jesus be with me in the brokenness. To experience his presence and companionship right here. To let him know me in this low place. To let him listen to me. To let myself listen to him. To sit here together in the truth of it and see what the experience of relationship with him in this place might bring.

Right now, and probably for the rest of today, my prayer is simply, “Be with me.”

What is your simple prayer today?