Crying in the Shower with Jesus

how to pray while managing your existential dread

Despite years of night terrors and the peculiarities of my OCD, no one would have categorized me as an anxious child. It was accepted that kids are weird and I just happened to be one of the weirder ones. Like many girls, I learned to hide my real feelings behind a smile. It didn’t feel safe to be honest. So I protected myself by pretending to be normal.

This is one of the reasons Jesus meant so much to me as a kid. He was the only one who actually knew me. He saw the things I hid from others and loved me anyway. And when I was alone and scared in the dark at night, I prayed my little heart out.

The tiny book of prayers I used was called “My First Communion Book”. Inside it went through all the basic prayers, including the liturgy of the mass and the rosary. There I was, just a normal kid obsessively reading my itty bitty book of prayers every night under the covers by flashlight. I read it so much the spine fell off. I still have this little book, sitting on my altar. While it may have inspired mild bouts of religious scrupulosity, it also taught me how to pray.

“When we talk to Jesus,” the book says, “we are praying.” It was as simple as that. I took it at its word.

I was taught to pray on my knees. At my bedside, in front of the cross, on the squishy foam kneeler in the pew on Sundays. My fingers had to be straight, not curved. My head had to be bowed just so. At home in my bed I could lay down and cuddle my cabbage patch doll and simply talk. And then at night, when everyone was asleep and I didn’t want to wake anyone, I wrote my prayers instead.

“Dear Jesus,” I wrote, before stuffing them into my pillowcase.

By the time I was in middle school my prayers had turned into poetry. I wrote so many poems I started posting them to the walls of my bedroom. Eventually my bed was surrounded in poetry. It was like a spell of protection. Through my poetry, I prayed. Afterwards I always felt better. Was Jesus listening? Perhaps I was writing to myself. Either way, I felt heard. As I grew I learned not to expect an answer. The poem was the answer.

In high school and college I discovered music and my poems turned into songs. I could hear prayers everywhere, not just in sacred music but secular, too. Every song was a prayer. Even when there were no words.

In his book Simply Pray, Erik Walker Wikstrom highlights four elements of prayer. Naming, Knowing, Listening, and Loving. Naming what is sacred and what is true. Knowing our faults and facing the truth. Listening to our own guiding voice. And then Loving. Choosing love over fear, praying for the highest good, and accepting what is.

After serving as a trauma chaplain during seminary, my anxieties and fears were at their worst. Not coincidentally, my “perfection performance” was equally torturing me. And when I needed it most, I found it very difficult to pray. I had witnessed so much pain and heartbreak I was drowning in secondary trauma. It was nearly impossible to name what was true and sacred when it felt like, honestly, nothing was.

“You know what you need,” my friend told me. “You need a shower cry. I was in there just this morning crying to Jesus and I feel so much better.”

It became a running joke between us when ministry got tough, Gotta go take a Jesus shower! It was funny but it worked. During those Jesus showers sometimes I cried and sometimes I didn’t, but I nearly always found the strength to come to grips with what was true and sacred. And in that naming—and crying—I encountered the grace to move forward.

Sometimes when I am really paying attention, I can see the earth praying in trees and flowers. I can smell prayers in the autumn air or the spring rain. And I can feel my own prayers of gratitude when I am laughing or hugging someone or one of my little dogs climbs onto my lap and falls asleep. If I am paying attention.

As we move through this election season, amid the devastations of war and climate catastrophe, I find myself once again wrestling with anxiety and fear. I’ve asked myself, where is God? I question the usefulness of thoughts and prayers. It doesn’t seem enough. And when I pay attention the only prayers I hear are ones of anguish.

And then I remember to keep it simple. Name it, face it, listen and love.

Right now I cannot bring myself to accept the pain and suffering and uncertainty we are experiencing as a global family. That part of prayer, the peace, eludes me. But I can close my prayers with the hope that tomorrow there will be peace. I can commit to choosing love over fear and hate. And I can pray for the strength to reach out with love, knowing in my bones that love in all its forms is a living prayer that can change the world.