Ask It Basket–"Can we pray for you?"
I was hanging out with Danielle Apple and her husband on the Sanford Riverwalk and right in the middle of our discussion on spirituality, the evangelical Christians show up wanting to pray for us.
Moments like this remind that everyone is walking their own winding spiritual path, often with more sincerity than skill. For them, prayer in public may have felt like obedience; for us, it became an invitation to choose compassion over old anger and to quietly reroute that energy into something gentler.
Were they eavesdropping?
Yesterday I met author Danielle Apple and her husband for lunch in Sanford; delicious, by the way. They are history buffs, so we went to the Sanford Riverwalk, where there is a veterans memorial, and walked around. We sat for a minute and started talking about how our views were once aligned along the evangelical Christian lines (a very long time ago) and how we transitioned out of that world. Then we moved on to discussing our spiritual views as they stand today.
Then a beautiful tall black woman, a cute Latina, and a young girl who was recording everything walked up, and the tall lady with sincere eyes asked if they could pray for us.
Danielle was okay with it. I said that if the young girl stopped recording, they could. They agreed, but I still think she recorded us on the sly. They asked if they could lay hands on our shoulders, and I offered mine.
I did so with the understanding that we all have our journey, and this is part of theirs. I felt I should because it was important for them somehow.
The template for praying for the “unsaved” (an assumption) in public came shining through, but the energy shifted pretty quickly.
As they prayed for us to come to know Father God, put Him first, know Him truly and deeply, I started getting annoyed, but in my head I remembered I gave them permission to pray. I could get annoyed, but I had a choice to honor giving them permission or give in to my past anger toward the religious. I honored giving them permission.
Then she started praying for more specifics.
I don’t know how I knew, but I knew that she was praying over us what she actually needed for herself. She was projecting her personal prayer on us. That of course could be a total assumption on my part but that thought led to compassion and I “felt” healing energy pass from me to her as I silently asked the Divine to bless her in all the ways she was asking for me.
I know! Spooky :)
“In Jesus Name, Amen.”
When they finished, they thanked us for letting them pray. They walked off, and I had compassion well up in my heart. I realized they are like a lot of evangelical Christians who honestly believe that praying for people in public will bless the people they are praying for, bring peace and comfort, and honor God.
It’s easy to assume they like the public paying attention to them personally and all kinds of nefarious motivations. But, to me, that’s a lazy assumption. 90% of the time, it may be an accurate assumption, but 100% of the time, I am part of the problem if I assume the worst and make accusations that may not be true.
Plus, they may believe God ordained their steps for our benefit when it may have been that the Divine ordained their steps for their benefit; that Danielle and I were the silent ministers to them by not being ornery and sending the energy they were calling over us to them as well.
Hope that makes sense.
In Conclusion…
Moments like this remind that everyone is walking their own winding spiritual path, often with more sincerity than skill. For them, prayer in public may have felt like obedience; for us, it became an invitation to choose compassion over old anger and to quietly reroute that energy into something gentler. If anything was “ordained” on that riverwalk, it might have been the chance for all of us to be ministered to in different ways—them through their boldness, and us through staying soft-hearted instead of cynical.
Do you have a question for the Ask It Basket? Nothing is off the table.
We had such a great, healing conversation. Everything that weighed so heavily on my mind was already written down, and there was no need to worry about the past. Only the now matters.
I find it interesting that the women offering to pray was something I myself would have done years ago, probably even calling spiritual warfare into the mix. It was compulsory back then. Like life or death, because if the people didn't accept god there was only one alternative. The very things that were meant to give me confidence and love for God actually put me in a perpetual state of fight or flight, and I'm grateful to be on this healing journey :)
I had an experience very much like this when Alan Chambers invited me to the Exodus conference in St. Paul (where you and I met for the first time, drank a nasty green veggie smoothie and gamely declared it “okay”). A guy came up to me and asked to pray over me after one of the plenary sessions. Inside, I rolled my eyes, but I accepted. After all, no harm is likely to occur, and his prayer was non-specific enough that no offense was given or taken.
That said, this is a kind of virtue-signaling that can often be off putting, especially in a public, non-religious setting. (Also I would not allow it to be recoded. If I wanted to create content I’d do it myself.) And for that evidence of attention-seeking alone I’d probably politely decline. That just feels creepy to me.