When I first came to know Christ about six years ago, I knew very little about prayer, and I was not attending any church regularly. I did read the New Testament, and I found myself having conversations with God and telling Him my needs as well as offering Him praise. But I had no idea that the Psalms could be used for prayer, and I had no idea how to go deeper into prayer. When I gave my life to Christ, I was also flooded with a rush of happy emotions, but sadly those emotions faded–and I didn’t know how to deal with that. I found myself slowly slipping away.

It was only upon attending an Orthodox Church several years ago that my faith renewed itself. Since I converted to Orthodoxy a little over two years ago, I have started to plumb the depths of prayer (but I still know so very little!). I take comfort in the prayers that the Church offers through some of the saints, and I take comfort in saying the Lord’s Prayer. I also now find the Psalms to be a source of comfort and joy. When I pray the Psalms, not only am I praying the words of Jesus and David, but I am also finding words for my own needs. In addition, I have taken great solace in some of the words of Christ in the gospels, and those words have comforted me in some of my darker periods. And I also am learning to sit still and meditate on what I read in Scripture and to say the Jesus Prayer.

Last, I have found that my prayers do not always elicit warm and happy emotions. Sometimes I don’t feel like praying, yet I still do pray because I know that a life in Christ is not based on how close I feel to God–and I know that the many of the Psalms express the emotions of those who feel a distance from God.

I think ultimately my prayer life has showed me that I am utterly and completely dependent on God (and though I intellectually knew that for a long time, it has taken certain life experiences and moving through those experiences in prayer to teach me that).