Prayer has felt difficult lately. I still do it, but some days I finish without much sense that anything has happened. That's part of what living beside me would look like too, so it belongs here with the things I find easier to explain.
I'm a Christian. I hold that faith in ways that can take some explaining, and I read beyond my own tradition. I've found things there that helped me understand what I believe, even when I couldn't have made them fit neatly into the answer I would have given a few years earlier.
I believe there's a Source behind all this, and that we're cared about. Paying close attention to the world feels like one way of responding. The questions, the land, the hope of children, and the work I want to do all have something to do with that belief. I don't experience them as separate compartments of my life.
There have been times when faith felt close and easy to recognize. At other times I've kept practicing without that feeling. I'd want her to know both versions of me. She wouldn't have to pretend certainty for my benefit, and I hope I could tell her when I was struggling without making her responsible for finding an answer.
I don't expect belief to protect us from suffering. People who have loved God faithfully have lost things they prayed hard to keep. I couldn't tell someone their grief meant they hadn't believed properly, and I'd want us to be careful about the explanations we offered when we had the good fortune to be outside another person's pain.
Much of my own practice happens while I'm doing something else. Outside, with my hands occupied, prayer finds its way into the day. It isn't always a separate hour with everything arranged around it. She'd probably get to know that part of me gradually, through being there.
A congregation is something I haven't made room for. I keep meaning to, and Sunday keeps losing to unfinished work. After years of that, calling it a scheduling problem doesn't explain very much. I've allowed the work to take precedence. If I want a place among other people practicing their faith, I'll have to start giving it time.
I'd be curious about her experience. What she grew up with, which parts she kept, and what made her put something down. Whether she prays, or used to, or has never understood what people mean when they talk about it. I'd rather hear the answer she actually has than one she thinks would make life easier with me.
We could disagree about doctrine for a long time. I'd want the questions to remain welcome, including the ones that were uncomfortable for both of us. Reading and asking them has changed my faith over the years. So far, it has remained, though I haven't kept every explanation I once used to defend it.
What we did with it would matter in the house. There could be room at the table for someone who needed company. We could give privately, including when generosity meant changing something we'd planned for ourselves. I'd like people to feel welcome around us without needing to share our beliefs or be useful to our work.
Any practice we shared would need both of us in it willingly. We might set aside an hour with no household business to discuss, say grace together, or mark the change of a season outside. We'd have to discover what felt true for us and what we were only doing because it looked like the sort of thing a couple ought to do.
The children would see some of that figuring out. They'd hear us ask questions and sometimes have no answer ready. I'd like them to feel free to do the same, knowing they could bring doubt into the room without disappointing us.
For now, I'm in a stretch where prayer takes more effort than it sometimes has. I don't know when that will change. I can keep making time for it, read something carefully, and pay attention to the person beside me. There's enough to do today without claiming I can see much farther.
