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What I Prayed For in the Depths of My Addiction.
Seeking Refuge at Rock Bottom.
How many times in your life have you prayed sincerely?
For a long time, I would have responded to that question with an egregiously high number — but upon recent reflection, I’m not sure I’d be so confident.
The first time that I can genuinely remember praying wholeheartedly, was as a kid in the third grade. A girl at school — who, I’ll admit, I had a massive crush on — brought me back a souvenir black teddy bear from her trip to Canada. I loved this thing. For years, I prayed that he would come alive, so that I would have a cool little best friend to hang out with.
Not one of the most sane prayer requests that God’s ever received, but surely not the worst.
Since then, I’ve prayed a lot. Sometimes with absolute honesty and abandonment to selfish gain. Sometimes insincerely. Not on purpose, there’s just certain situations where I’ve felt like I had to pray — the social anxiety of declining my turn in the prayer circle as a teenager was simply too much. Heck, even as an adult, my stomach still regularly ties itself into knots when the Pastor delegates prayer time and asks us to pray for the person next to us.
