I will not speak about prayer. That would be too little, and it would be about me.
Let prayer speak about me instead — as a work of God within me, not as a deed of mine toward God. And this is precisely why the testimony cannot be finished with a written ending. It cannot close now, at the end of a line, because the work itself is not finished. It will only end when I no longer need healing — that is, at death, or rather, beyond it, when the healing is made complete.
At the beginning, prayer spoke of my inability to stop talking. It filled the emptiness with words, so I would not feel the emptiness. It gave me a form of being occupied before God, like a man who rushes into a house and fills the silence with news, afraid the silence might ask him something.
Then prayer began to speak of my short patience. It asked me to remain, and I wanted to leave. It asked for measure, and I wanted speed — the same speed I seek even in speaking with people, cutting straight to the core, without detour. Prayer kept me there, in the detour my mind despises, and taught me that not everything true must be said quickly, and not every road toward God can be shortened.
Later, prayer spoke of my fear — not the fear of death as an end, but the fear of separation, the only fear I have found true in myself. And it was prayer, too, that brought, alongside the fear, the hope that does not extinguish it but keeps it watchful: whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame.
If prayer were to speak now about me, it might say only this: that I was a man who wanted to know the truth more than to be pleasing, and that this price was carried both at home and on the road, in the car, among strangers who stepped out carrying a word — heavy or light — further on without me. It might say that I asked forgiveness for all those I upset without meaning to, more often than I asked for myself. It might say that I loved philosophy and psychology not as masters, but as servants, and that I wanted to hold their hand toward Christ, not toward myself.
But none of this is a finished testimony yet. It is only today’s page in a book that did not write itself, and that is not mine to close.
Paradise is not my meaning, nor is hell my final fear. Christ is the meaning. And so, if prayer had the last word about me, it would not be a verdict, but a request left open, the same one I carry on my lips: Lord, even if I reach hell, let me keep the joy of Your Name.
This prayer about me does not end here. It ends when I die. And perhaps not even then.
