An Existential Crisis Led Me To Stop Praying

And redefine what prayer means

Existential crises are moments that prompt us to question the meaning of our life and existence. With any major transition, especially the loss of a loved one, strong feelings of existential anxiety can arise.

Recently, a consistent character in my life that I’ve known since birth contracted the pandemic virus and was crashing towards death. This impending loss led me to contemplate remnants of what I used to believe.

When I was asked to pray for God to spare his life, my reaction of uneasiness and opposition swung a wrecking ball into all I was taught in childhood.

I began challenging what I least expected: prayer itself. Because what prayer once meant to me, it means no more.

This sent me reeling because I lacked a solution as to how or why to pray.

As an ex-pastor’s daughter from an evangelical, cultish church growing up, what I thought of prayer was that it was foremost a petition, recurrently “asking God” for help and a way to demonstrate healing powers. This perilously gave me an illusion of control in life.

Examining my past desperation to use religious “healing gifts” to manage suffering, forced me into a battle with my view of prayer and a divine power. As a child, I believed I could prevent bad outcomes with prayer, swaying God with my elite requests. I could save the world. I could avoid Death and all of his friends, if I was in God’s favor and prayed the right prayers.

I thought I could save everyone from suffering until… I couldn’t.

This method of praying became an exhausting power struggle, a tedious appeal instead of anything that reflected acceptance, love, and peace.

I tired of asking a higher power to end suffering, because when those requests were left unmet, I felt painfully abandoned by that higher power.

So I stopped praying.

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