I Feel Like a Psychopath During Prayer

I don't say that for shock value. It's just the thought that goes through my head when it's quiet and still, when I've been told to put the phone down, stop scrolling, stop working, and simply talk to God.

Because here's the truth: it's really hard for me to do nothing with my hands.

I'm somebody who loves working. I love solving problems. I love strategizing. I love moving the ball forward. I struggle with vacation. I struggle to sit through a TV show. I literally fast-forward through movies if I get the point the director is trying to make. What I actually enjoy is doing things that push me toward my goals. So when I'm told to sit still, to not do, to just pray and rely on God and wait to hear from Him, I feel like a psychopath, because I can't do it. And I know I'm supposed to. The Bible tells me to. I know it's good for me. It's still hard.

I hear people talk about their relationship with God like He's a best friend sitting right next to them. Sounds like they have a childish imaginary friend. And if I'm honest, God doesn't usually feel that way to me. He doesn't feel like He's in the room. He feels like a truth I know is true, the same way I know gravity is true. I don't doubt for a second that He is real. There have been seasons where He was unmistakably in the room. But that's not how I live my daily life. So when I watch other people experience God as a continual presence, it feels like a distant thing I'm observing from the outside. Like I'm hovering above it in the third person, not really in it. And I feel like I'm missing out.

This doesn't shake my faith. I'm not writing this because I'm in crisis with God. I just want to experience that. And the reality is that, because of my upbringing and my own trauma, I run from emotional experiences. I don't embrace them. I sometimes even doubt whether they're legitimate, because I was taught pretty young that emotions are troublesome, that they get in the way of the things you need to get done. I was conditioned not to feel.

Now, I do feel. So I'm not actually a psychopath. I just can't regularly summon any feelings, and I can't reason my way into it either. I don't know if this is just brain chemistry. Maybe it's the way I'm permanently wired. There are different giftings within the family of God, and I hold on to that to make myself feel more normal. It doesn't mean I don't pray. I do pray. My prayers are just short, concise, and efficient. I've read a lot of books on prayer, and I rotate them into my reading rhythms. I follow prayer warriors and regularly listen to podcasts to expose myself to those who are great in this area. I show up to our weekly prayer meetings. My seminary even had a spiritual formation track that forced some of these principles onto me early on. I did enjoy those classes even if I didn’t always get it.

But I keep asking the same question: why am I wired to feel so little here? And why does a blessing in one area of my life cost me in another?

This same wiring, the struggle to have an emotional experience with God, makes me really good at a lot of things in life. But to the people closest to me, I think it's more of a curse. I struggle to be open about my emotions, partly because I often don't even know what they are. That's just not how I process the world.

Here's the metaphor I keep coming back to. When someone describes experiencing God like a friend in the room, I feel like they're seeing the world in color and I'm seeing it in black and white. They're pointing at the shades, describing these beautiful things they see, and I'm colorblind. I can tell something real is there. I just can't see it the way they do.

So yeah. Sometimes I feel like a psychopath.

I like being around those who see the world this way. I enjoy being challenged and pushed on this. But I don't always feel like I actually change when I'm in those spaces. And I honestly don't know whether being colorblind on this is okay, just part of how I'm made, or whether it's something I'm supposed to fight to change. I don't always like that this is my default response.

I just wish I could feel a bit more in those moments. That’s my prayer.