Very often, when I am sitting with an unanswered prayer, here’s what I want to say to God: “Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer!” — Psalm 4:1

I want to know that I am heard. I want God’s consolation even if the answer I receive isn’t ultimately the one I want. But I want a visible sign that I am heard. When my heart hurts, I want to know that God cares.

“Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; hold not your peace at my tears! For I am a sojourner with you, a guest, like all my fathers.” — Psalm 39:12

From the words of these psalms, I understand I am not the only one.

Which leads to the uncomfortable question of, “Why pray at all?” Does a change in my life come because of my own actions, or because I have prayed to God? Or both? Who gets credit when a need is answered, and who receives blame when it isn’t? Me or God?

This is a daunting question, because it considers the very nature of our relationship with God. It’s right up there with the question of suffering, which I have yet to hear a satisfactory answer to. It is a question we see wrestled with in the Book of Job. When God finally shows up, his answer to Job is essentially, “Who are you to question me?”

Ending our year and beginning a new one with a thoughtful reflection lets us see we are stronger than we believed and our lives are richer then we imagined. We discover grace surrounds us on more days than not.

Instead of a list of resolutions, find yourself some quiet time this week, and reflect on the past year: What good thing did you experience? Are you proud of yourself for keeping an important commitment to your partner or your children or yourself? Can you remember a time when you gave someone grace through acts of compassion or patience or generosity? Did you overcome a fear or find courage to make a big move even as you were afraid?

An unexpected snowstorm. And in this hour before sunset, the sky has cleared enough for the lingering rays of the sun to cast a delicate wash of pink across the newly fallen snow.

This beauty can make you feel cozy and secure or desolate and lonely. My decorations are up, my first round of Christmas cookies have been baked and given out. Handel’s “Messiah” plays in the background as I move around my home.

It occurred to me that not only did the road engineers not need my help, but they could see the result of this construction project when I could not. I had not needed to be worried all those months.

Simultaneously, it occurred to me that this was a very fitting analogy for what my prayer life can feel like.

Over the course of this podcast, I have spent more time reading, thinking and writing about God than I have in the previous 54 years of my life. And what have I achieved? Do I feel enlightened? Have I attained a higher level of consciousness?

Actually not at all. To be honest even if I spent the next 50 years continuing my pursuit of God through books and prayer, I don’t think I would be any more enlightened than I am right now.

Instead, I have discovered that with every book I read, I want to learn more.

What I discovered is that when I don’t go to church, something is missing in my life. Something is missing in my spiritual walk with God. Yes I can worship and love God on my own. I do so daily. I can even worship God through church services that are televised through my computer or Zoom.

But worshiping and loving God with other people on Sundays and during weekday services in person — knowing that I pray with and for others, that they pray for me, that our voices are lifted together as one — is more than I can accomplish alone.

Our evening prayer service, which still meets via Zoom, has become more meaningful as we began meeting in person once a month. The remarkable moving of the Holy Spirit is palpable during this in-person prayer service. What’s different?

On Tuesdays after the 8 a.m. Mass at St. Mary’s in Breckenridge, we are invited to stay for 30 minutes of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. These 30 minutes of silent prayer and meditation seem to be the perfect way to end the Mass and start the rest of our day.

Last Tuesday during adoration, I finished praying my rosary, sat back in my pew and contemplated the Blessed Sacrament as my fingers absentmindedly toyed with the wooden beads of my rosary.

I was, frankly, feeling a little out of sorts with prayers for my mother to regain her ability to walk after hip surgery and my own search for remote-based work. So I resorted to the remedy that always brings relief when I feel overwhelmed with worry: I count three things I am grateful for.

The main body of the rosary is made up of five decades of prayer beads: one large bead followed by 10 smaller wooden beads. The large bead represents the Our Father prayer, and the smaller beads represent the Hail Mary prayer. Altogether, this makes one decade, which is repeated five times.

As I began to count the things I was grateful for, I found myself keeping track by moving my fingers along each bead. I quickly completed the first decade of gratitude, but could I think of 50 things I was grateful for?

I’ll ask you to excuse me this week because as I recount my experience from last Tuesday’s Mass, I still get a smile on my face. And quite honestly, it’s inexplicable to me.

I arrived around 7:45 a.m. so that I could pray before Mass began. My prayers usually entail a laundry list of things I want to ask God’s help with.

But on Tuesday morning, I knelt, bowed my head and said “thank you” in the silence of my mind. I found myself repeating “thank you” over and over and over again.

After a few minutes of this one-note prayer, I began to wonder what I was thanking God for?

Last week, I watched the Olympic trials for swimming. Swimming is my favorite Olympic sport because I was a competitive swimmer for 11 years from the age of 11 through my sophomore year at the University of Michigan.

A reporter asked one of the swimmers what his strategy would be for the finals against a very competitive field. The young man replied that he had trained for this day and that his job now was just to swim his own race and not worry about what others were doing.

That’s what I loved about swimming competitively. My race would be won or lost based on my own training and how well I performed on that day. No one was going to jump in my lane and stop me from swimming. My success or failure was up to my own efforts.

What do these lessons from swimming have to do with our walk of faith?

Does it make a difference when we pray alone or together? This week I discuss what I recently gained by sharing my prayers for my mother during a weekday Mass.