Resting in prayer

I stopped actively asking people to pray for my intentions a long while ago. After not seeing what you think is the biggest desire of your heart not seem to come to pass in a tangible way despite asking a lot of super holy people bombarding heaven with prayer... I don't know, I just tired of it. In real life that has translated to not as actively pursuing that desire because of the dread of the heartbreak and sorrow that accompanies each time I do get my hopes up, as well as a regression from personal prayer, at least of the formal, sit-down and focus variety.

And yet on Friday (yeah, my birthday, the day that's supposed to be like yeah, everything rocks, yeah!), I made a medium-large sizedish mistake. It was my own fault, I was careless in judgment, but as I was going about trying to figure out how to fix my mistake (still not resolved, please pray to St. Anthony for me), I realized I was walking around and praying a string of Hail Marys without realizing it. As much as I thought I had run away from prayer, I was shocked to find myself in a state of offering up my self-inflicted misery. And so I swallowed my pride and texted a friend to pray for my situation.

The thing is, we all of our struggles with personal prayer, but we can also tend to struggle in asking for prayer as well, and perseverance in asking for the same intention over... and over... and over again. Just like repetitive habitual venial sin and how much it weighs on us until we think if we confess it one more time the priest is sure to throw something at me, we think that if we ask for that intention one more time, our friend might seriously run for the hills.

Our recourse should be praying AND in resting in the prayer that others offer for us. And we should rejoice in the knowledge that God is using those prayers  and graces to heal the body of Christ where most needed, even if He deems that it is not my life needing it at the moment.  It's definitely a case of head knowledge becoming heart knowledge, and I don't think I'm there even halfway yet, but thank God for the gifts of faith and hope.