Prayer box

Recently I’ve been reading a book about prayer by Anne Lamott, in which she summarizes all prayer types into 3 main categories. She names them simply, as in the title of her book, as Help, Thanks, Wow. On page 36 she described a material tool she uses to assist her with the toughest prayers of “help.” She said that tool is a box.

She uses that box to help let go of something that troubles her. Into the box she puts a written page onto which she describes whatever kind of internal struggle she is having. That’s a way to give a physical action for the process of psychological or spiritual letting go. The point is a material tool can help with the big struggles that mess up her well-being.

Such a tool helps because it becomes a way to see and feel the letting go process. She remembered a time of extreme stress when someone said to her, “Just let go and let God,” and the feeling that came over her was to hit that person. In that moment her thought was, “If it were that simple, I’d had done it.”

So how the box process works is first to actually write down a description (in as much detail as possible) of what you need divine help with — and why you can’t do it yourself. Merely admitting on paper the need for help brings about the beginning of a more effective way of letting go. The next step is to hold the paper next to your heart for several seconds. Next comes the prayer or time for meditation that begins by reading slowly what is written; followed by closing your eyes and meditating on those written words. Finally, slowly place the paper in the box. Take a deep breath as you close the lid then sigh the breath away as you pray the message to be ‘sent.’

Ms. Lamott then explained that an agreement needed to be made with yourself to not open the box until you sense that something happens to make you think the prayer has been answered. Of course, she admits that time is often a problem for us because there may be a long time before we sense that answer.

She said this box helps in cases of being worried, obsessed, angry, or distressed so much you feel like nothing can be done to stop your anguish. Also, she has used it to help with a relationship that upsets her so much she can’t see a way for reconciliation — that’s when she writes down a description of what the relationship problem is, then puts that in the box.

To all of this I would add the power of agapé. The prayer I could see as helpful for letting go would be something like, “I pray for the power of agapé to work on this.” And here again is where we need to remember (as that ancient religious leader, Paul, said) agape is patient. We need to be patient with agape because the answer we sense may take longer to fulfill than we wish it would.