Maybe if my child hadn’t been at such a difficult age or the church my husband and I were building, had been significantly larger, I could have trudged on without taking steps into the deep realms of prayer that I ended up taking. It’s possible I might would have succumbed to the well known pattern of praying mostly when burdened, rejoicing in blessings, praying before during and after services, as well as at prayer meetings. But I always had a dream, from the very beginning, of being more than that.

Prayer is one of those things that seem so illusively fascinating. While observing a person of great prayer, we often stare intently, wondering, all of the things, they know. Even without conscious thought on our part, they climb the ladder in our esteem, similar to that of a scientist, a mathematician or any other person of great discipline, who knows and understands important things, that we do not. A elite human being of sorts. Yet when it’s time for us to pray ourselves…. boredom, and a multitude of (suddenly “less boring”) chores come flitting through the mind to distract us. Things like yard work, junk mail and laundry! It is with this basic understanding of self, that I determinedly began my journey, into the depths of prayer.

My parents had taken me to conferences year after year to hear Vesta Mangun, Nona Freeman, James Kilgore, Gerald Mangun, and others, people of great prayer. I listened intently to them, as they would tell me how to become a person of prayer. Whether or not they said those exact words (I don’t think they did) that is, what I took home. I understood that if I could discipline my body to pray, I could potentially be a powerful person like them. And the amount of time that they spent in prayer, gave me the measuring stick by which I needed, to understand it took “time” to gain power with God and Man.

There was no doubt they were powerful people, It could be sensed when they were near, something deep inside surging forth. Some emotive leap of  electric energy that came from a deep place within my chest. A current only completed when it connected to something in them. One thing I do know is, it was not fake. It was not a suggested emotion. It was as real as love, joy, anger or sorrow. Like all other things that are ethereal,  and not concrete (such as science wishes that all things could be;). Best described like love, which is impossible to define, or ignore. Yet there was some powerful force, beyond the veil of concrete matter and unique to the human experience. This was the thing to which I would spend many years seeking to explore. The impact of this journey has led me on a continuous path to seek deeper truths about the depths of prayer. For prayer is a journey and not a destination. So it was, because of these and many more reasons, (of which I will speak of in future blogs), that I began to pray. And because I did learn how to pray. I have multitudes of testimonies and stories to share with you. Walk with me through this blog, as I remember how, my prayer journey, began…