When Words Fail: Help for the One Struggling to Pray

She left us quickly, unexpectedly, four years ago this month.

One of the things I miss most about my mother is the sound of her voice. I’ve kept her last voicemail on my phone since 2020. 

As much as I treasure the recording, I wish I’d answered that call instead.

Listen long while they’re alive, the silence will be so deafening when they’re gone.

Ann Voskamp

Neither of us were ever good at talking on the phone, and the calls were never long, but just hearing her inflection and idioms and sometimes mildly-sarcastic quips reaffirmed that I was known and loved, even if not always understood. She somehow knew there was more to each call than the words we both were (or weren’t) saying. As a good mother, she knew that the unspoken mattered.

So I made quick calls after births of babies and births of dreams, following broken bones and broken hearts. She made quick responses, and our busy, separated lives continued on.

WHEN WORDS ARE HARD TO COME BY

I guess I’ve always been a little short on words. At least the spoken kind. Not surprising that I have several shelves of books on prayer, from examples and practical tips to stories about prayer and prompted prayer journals. But even with all this at my fingertips, sometimes the circumstances of life steal my words. Sometimes I can barely breathe, much less give voice to how my heart is broken. Sometimes stringing together words for a prayer just seems impossible.

Seems I’m not alone.

I remember a sweet story about a man who overheard his four-year-old granddaughter repeating the alphabet in a tone that sounded very serious. Asked what she was doing, she responded, “I’m praying, but I can’t think of exactly the right words, so I’m just saying all the letters, and God will put them together for me, because He knows what I’m thinking.” 

The little girl was wise beyond her years. Anyone who’s been an adult very long knows that life can hit hard and knock the wind out of you. Holy Spirit fills in the gaps, even when all we can do is gasp.

THE SPIRIT STEPS IN

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Romans 8:26-27

When we do not even know what to pray for, the Spirit intercedes for us through wordless groans. The Spirit steps in and carries our “groanings”—thoughts and feelings we simply cannot express in human words—to God. Holy Spirit not only creates the connection between us and God, but often provides the content of our communication as well.

David, the man after God’s own heart, has more prayers recorded in Scripture than anyone else (by a long shot). I always figured he had a storehouse of words. But in Psalm 6:6 he says, “I am worn out from my groaning.” In Psalm 5:1, “consider my groaning.” He says in Psalm 38:8, “I groan because of the turmoil of my heart.” Psalm 22 is the same one Jesus Himself quoted on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” David goes on to mention groaning later in the same verse. Several translations use the word “groan” when describing Jesus as He witnessed the grief of Lazarus’s sisters.

What is the meaning of this often-used-in-Scripture, not-so-much-in-everyday-life word? Here’s a definition:

We are hard-wired with Divine intention. Turns out, this groaning serves a physical purpose, too. The sound we make in our pain causes a release of breath, a powerful exhale. That noise resonates in the brain, increasing serotonin. A higher level of serotonin improves our mood. By groaning, we are able to grasp hope again.

Praying, in the words of Walter Brueggeman is “committing an act of hope,” he writes in Praying the Psalms. He later writes in Spirituality of the Psalms, “even in the darkness, there is One to address.” There is One who hears every cry.

When the difficulties of life mute us, I am thankful it is not how well we pray, but that we pray. I’ve learned this when sitting with grieving friends: A hurting heart sometimes needs silence and wordless sounds. God understands this and He longs to hear both from us.

When the difficulties of life mute us,
I am thankful it is not how well we pray, but that we pray.

lori ann wood

THE WHO IS WHAT MATTERS

Thankfully, my relationship with my mother didn’t depend on the number of actual words we exchanged. Neither does our relationship with God. And the eloquence of my prayers does not carry them higher.

Prayer is valid not because of my expertise in the matter, but because of the object of my prayers—the One I am praying to. It’s not my prayers that can do anything, but it is prayer that links me to the One who can.

Jill Briscoe

Prayer miraculously tethers the throne of God to my front door. Once you internalize that the Creator of the Universe is moved at simply the sound of your voice, your prayers become more than the words. Especially when your prayers come out in the shape of groans. 

From my journal:

The disappointment of this echocardiogram is suffocating. Nine years into this, I am weary and disappointed and frustrated. I can’t even pray. For someone who loves words, I can’t seem to string any together for God right now. Why is it when I need to pray most, I can’t?

It’s no wonder this prayer thing is hard. We who barely understand ourselves are approaching a God we cannot possibly understand. It helps me to know that it doesn’t depend on us to get all the facts straight or all the words in line. We don’t pray to tell God what He does not know or remind Him of things He’s forgotten. He already cares about the things we care about. He’s just waiting for us to care about them with Him.  (And sometimes groan about them to Him.)

I’m grateful that groaning frees me from the pressure of speaking words when I can’t find them. It keeps me on the phone with a God who is desperate to stay connected to His child.

HIDDEN INSIDE THE WORDS

When my words are out of the way, my heart comes into focus.

My first year in college, I usually called my mom from the laundry room payphone instead of my dorm room landline. I didn’t want my roommate to hear the catch in my voice. (I secretly hoped Mom would hear my hurt, though.) I had no idea at the time that my mother needed to hear my voice maybe even more than I needed to hear hers. My few words told her something, but my tone and inflection probably told her more.

God hears these unspoken messages, too. He desperately wants to keep the conversation going.

God hears our unspoken messages, too.
He desperately wants to keep the conversation going.

lori ann wood

So when you have to, groan. God hears your heart in that brave act of reaching out. Just like my mom heard my heart in those short, sometimes stifled calls.

As I cling to Mom’s few words and wish I had more of them, I’m discovering that maybe her legacy is really not about how (or if) she’s remembered. Maybe her legacy is about how I live differently because of how she lived. My mother was a constant pray-er. I’m trying.

Some days I hear Mom’s familiar words come out of my own mouth and I hope that in even deeper ways, I’m becoming more like her. She shaped me in such a way that I will, in the most important parts of my being, always be made of her. Mom taught me with her sparse words, and continues to teach me in her absence, what Author E.M. Bounds says,

God shapes the world by prayer. Prayers are deathless. 

E.M. Bounds

So save that voicemail from a parent or sister or friend. Better yet, make sure you answer.

In the fullness of time, you understand how precious those calls are—that they will not always be an option. 

When that inevitable day of loss comes, rest in the promise that you can call a more permanent Home. God will always answer. He hears your groaning, and even the catch in your voice. And, maybe most clearly, He hears what you’re not saying, too.

Listen to this post read by the author HERE.