Prayer is an interesting thing. I grew up in a family that prayed. We prayed over our food and we were encouraged to pray individually and talk to Heavenly Father. Sometimes, I would burst into my parents' bedroom and find one of them on their knees saying a silent prayer. So I grew up in a home where prayer wasn't an odd thing.
I also had wonderful experiences at various friends' houses. At one friend's house, as we sat around the dinner table, the family held hands as one of them offered what they called "grace." It was strange at first, since my family didn't hold hands when we prayed together; but I grew to love it. It made me feel close to them as a family. I learned something from those moments: prayer brings people together at the same time it brings them closer to God. (3 Nephi 18:21)
And have you ever had someone pray for you by name, out loud? I'm sure my mom and dad prayed for me by name sometimes, during our family prayers--like before a piano recital or when I was feeling sick; but I don't really remember any specific instances. The first time I remember someone praying for me by name, out loud, was in the home of my future husband. I was dating my husband at the time and it was my first time in his childhood home. The day I was going to fly back home, the family knelt together in prayer and my future father-in-law mentioned me specifically by name and asked for some blessings in my behalf. I have never experienced anything like that before. It is one of the most tender moments of my life--a moment when I felt the love of God from someone who I had only known a short time.
The interesting thing about prayer, is that I have been praying my entire life, but only now am beginning to recognize the power attached to prayer. It is not that I ever thought prayer didn't work. I always felt that Heavenly Father was listening to me. But in the last few years, for the first time in my life, I have wanted and needed things desperately--so desperately, that my prayers changed from being a habitual conversation with a friend I knew and trusted to pleading, constant cries to the only Being in the universe who knew me and those I loved well enough and who had the kind of love and power to actually help me and change me and fix me. (Enos 1:4, Alma 5:45-46, Alma 34:18-27,)
And those kind of prayers worked. Really worked. I was asking for BIG things. Sometimes the answers were immediate, other times the answers took years to come. Sometimes the answers were exactly what I asked for. Sometimes the answers weren't even close to what I asked for. But the answers always came. And these new kinds of prayers I am praying are changing me and changing the way I see the world and other people. (D&C 112:10, Jeremiah 29:12-13)
Whatever your circumstance, I can promise you that when you pray, Heavenly Father hears you and answers. It may take time and it will take a lot of prayers, but the moment you kneel on the ground (be it physically or only figuratively), you will begin to feel him near you. You don't even have to have the right words. Most of the time, I don't. "Prayer is made up of heart throbs and the righteous yearnings of the soul, of supplication based on the realization of need, of contrition and pure desire."
"I have had prayers answered. Those answers were most clear when what I wanted was silenced by an overpowering need to know what God wanted. It is then that the answer from a loving Heavenly Father can be spoken to the mind by the still, small voice and can be written on the heart."
President Henry B. Eyring
-Elin
Who really likes the color blue...as evidenced in this post
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