I’m going to tell you something I’ve never said out loud, let alone written down: for two years, I stopped praying. And I don’t mean I drifted off slowly, or that my prayers got shorter. I mean that I just… stopped. My kids stopped asking for it. My husband and I stopped talking about it at the kitchen table. Prayer went from the thing our family revolved around to the thing we avoided, like a bill we kept putting off and a conversation we couldn’t do anymore.
This is the story of how that happened — and, more importantly, how it got fixed. Not with a spiritual reboot, not with a thirty-day challenge or an app. It came back to us in slow, unglamorous, almost embarrassing ways. And I think that’s what a lot of us need to hear.
The Season When Our Prayers Went Quiet
If I’m honest, I lost it a long time before two years ago. I lost it somewhere around the time faith started to feel like a performance. You know the one: be cheerful, be grateful, be sure. Pray the “right” words. Make sure the kids are seeing a God you personally never doubted.
I had convinced myself that praying meant having the answers lined up before I even got there. If I sat down and the first thing that came up was God, why is my kid sick, and where are you in all of this?, I figured I’d done it wrong. So I stopped going. It was easier not to ask than to sit in the silence with a question I couldn’t answer.
And then one morning I read the beginning of Psalm 13:1 and felt like it had been written on my own life:
“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?”
That verse is not a polished, tidy prayer. It’s a raw, honest, almost angry cry. And I realized I’d been disqualifying myself for years because my prayers ran more like this than I’d ever admit out loud. God didn’t flinch when the psalmist asked “how long.” He stayed. That stuck with me.
The Night It All Came Apart
It fully cracked on a Tuesday. We were at dinner, the good kind — the kind where I’d been trying really hard to make the house feel “put together.” And my ten-year-old, who asks the most unsettling questions with the most unsettling calmness, looked at me and asked, Does God even hear us?
I froze. “What makes you say that?” I asked, because obviously I knew what she was really asking.
“Because we’ve been asking for a long time,” she said. And then, quieter, “and nothing’s changed.”
I could have preached her a sermon. I could have quoted verses and talked about God’s timing. I’ve done those things before, and they’ve worked, and I still believe in all of it. But that night, looking at her face, I realized the sermon would have been a lie. What she needed wasn’t an answer. What she needed was a parent who was honest enough to say: I don’t know, and it’s okay that I don’t know, and I’m still here with you and with Him.
I said, “I think He hears us. I also think we don’t get to see the whole picture yet. And the fact that we can’t see it yet doesn’t mean He’s not in it.” She was quiet for a while, then said, “Can we just talk to Him and ask, even if we don’t know what to say?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s just talk to Him.” And we did. Badly, honestly, and without a single “polished” word.
What a Psalm Taught Me About Honest Prayer
Here’s the thing: I think most of us were taught that prayer was a formality. You stand, or kneel, you say the words, you close with “amen.” And if any of that got messy, you started over until you got the words “right.”
The Bible keeps showing us the opposite. Take 1 Kings 19:4–9. Elijah had just had his greatest victory — the showdown on Mount Carmel, the fire, the whole thing. And immediately after that he’s lying under a tree telling God he’s had enough and asking to die. What does God do? He doesn’t scold him. He doesn’t say “you should be more grateful.” He sends an angel with food and sleep. Then He shows up — not in a wind, not in a fire, not in an earthquake — but in what the text calls:
“A sound of silent stillness.” (a gentle whisper)
God meets Elijah exactly where he is: tired, scared, and small. Then there’s James 5:13, which is probably the simplest invitation to real prayer you’ll ever read:
“Is anyone among you suffering? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs.”
No requirements. No format. “Are you suffering? Then pray.” That’s it. God isn’t waiting for you to get your act together. He’s waiting for you to bring your real stuff.
Stumbling Back Into It — Slowly, Honestly
So what actually brought prayer back to our house? Not a moment of overwhelming power. It was a dozen small, stupid, unglamorous choices, made over about four months.
Small Rhythms, Not Performance
First, I stopped making family prayer a production. No more “gather ’round, let’s do our devotional.” Just: when someone in the house needs it, we go. Sometimes that’s before bed. Sometimes that’s in the car when the roads are bad. We gave the kids permission to pray in their own words — half the time that means “God, please” and a shrug. And that’s enough. That’s more than enough.
Second, we stopped treating silence as failure. For a long time, not talking to God was the thing that was wrong. Now we’ve gotten to the place where sitting next to Him in the quiet — not saying a word — can be a kind of prayer too. The kids have learned that God isn’t a vending machine where you insert the right words and He hands you what you want. He’s more like a friend who sits with you in the hospital waiting room and says, “I’m not going anywhere.”
And underneath all of it, I think I’ve finally come to understand Joshua 24:15:
“As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
I used to read that like a contract I’d signed once and could check off. Now I read it as something I have to choose again — at the kitchen table, in the car, when the news is bad and the kid is sick and the house is quiet. “Me and my house” isn’t a statement. It’s a daily, small, real choice.
Here’s What’s Working Now
It’s not fixed. I’d be lying if I told you it was. We still have weeks where nothing feels like it’s moving. The kids still ask the hard questions. I still wonder, some mornings, whether any of this is real or just the story I tell myself.
But here’s what’s different: we’re not afraid to say it anymore. When my daughter asks whether God hears us, we don’t pretend we have a perfect answer. We say, “I think He does. Let’s just talk to Him.” And that honesty — the willingness to sit next to the question instead of running from it — is, I believe, where real faith actually lives. Not in the answers. In the continuing to ask, together, out loud, in a house that isn’t perfect.
If you’re trying to rebuild something like that in your own home, I’ve put together the simple family prayer rhythms and question pages we actually use — the ones that work at our table, no hype. You can find it in our faith-building shop. And if you’re the one trying to keep a quiet, real devotional going on your own (the way I was, alone at the kitchen table before all this), the short devotional in the shop has been exactly what I wish someone had handed me back then.
I don’t have it all figured out. I just stopped pretending I did — and started showing up, again, badly and honestly and together. That’s all I can offer. I hope it’s something.