sometimes you just need to yell at God during a thunderstorm

Prayer is really weird.

Best I can tell, if God doesn't exist I am going to have spent thousands of years of my life talking to:

• my hands
• the inside of my eyelids
• car windshields
• hot coffee/tea
• walls
• my bible

...and tonight a thunderstorm. 

If God is real though, I will have spent such a small portion of my life talking to and listening to the only one who matters. 

Either way (talking to inanimate objects or the author of everything ever) it seems dumb how sanitized my prayers are. If I am usually praying to a windshield, I doubt that the windshield cares much about my diction or whether or not I use some salty language. I cannot fathom that my coffee cup cares if my laments make sense, or if they are petty. 

I also cannot really see how God would care either. 

Don't get me wrong, I am quite sure that God cares that I pray and the content of my prayers. I am just not sure that God is easily offended or turned off by the content of the prayers. If God really is the author, he is in the heads of his characters. I am already known. "Thou's", "oughts" aren't going to fool him. Neither are worthless and meaningless platitudes like, "but I know you care". I am sure he does, but when I am uttering that line, I rarely believe he does. Who wants a God who is so easily buttered up? 

This week, my small group is supposed to be working on prayer. I doubted that I would find this week so difficult. In my head it seems easy to be honest and even vulgar with one who knows my inner vulgarity. Yet when I close my eyes (or bow my head, or whatever) I find myself often incapable of actual honesty. All the formality and hypocrisy that so appalled me in my early Christian days takes over in me. Rather than honesty, I become tongue-tied. 

But, when faced with a thunderstorm tonight, it seemed easier. Something about the violence of the scene before me made it easier to pray the violent, angry prayers in my own heart. They came out of me like vomit. All of my internal anger found external expression. Somehow, I was able to believe that the God of the lightning I could see and the thunder I could hear would appreciate those prayers. I worry that if I am unfiltered that I am going to hurt people and break relationships. For once, I wasn't worried about breaking relationship with God. 

Maybe part of prayer is to daily affirm that God can handle our crap. That he is not unaffected by us. He hears the cry of his people, even if the rest of the world wouldn't find those cries to be very important. 

I am not feeling thankful for as much as I ought today. Gratefulness is not my strongest virtue. But today I am thankful for this; I am thankful for the God who hears.