Prayer Witness Talk
-
2020 Stewardship of Prayer Witness Talk - Jess Kimmet
-
STEWARDSHIP OF PRAYER WITNESS TALK
PRESENTED BY: Jess Kimmet
NOVEMBER 28/29, 2020
Hello, friends! My name is Jess Kimmet. I’ve been married to Mark for six years and we have two kids so far: Marty is four and Lucas is almost two. I’m so grateful to be able to talk to you a little today about stewardship of prayer and how my own faith has grown through my imperfect but ongoing attempts to pray.
Since becoming a parishioner at St. Pius, I’ve been really struck at how the parish approaches stewardship as a holistic way of life and an identity we can grow into. Stewardship is our response of gratitude to the many gifts God is always giving us. As good stewards, we strive to give a first fruits gift back to God. When we’re talking about stewardship of prayer, that’s a gift of time, but is maybe even more a gift of attention. Our attention is so fragmented and splintered by the way our culture demands we live our lives, and any time we can focus on another person without distraction we are giving them a great gift. This is true of God, too!
Now, I’m not very good at this! I’m a task-oriented person who loves checking things off a to-do list, and simply giving my attention to someone never feels like much of an accomplishment. It’s something I’m working on being more patient with in all my relationships, and especially in my relationship with God, who does not normally demand my attention in the loud and insistent ways my children might, but rather gently invites it and patiently waits for me to respond.
And even though I don’t feel like I’m good at it, I do keep trying to respond, and my response looks really different as I move through the different seasons of my life. Before I had kids, I loved to pray with the Liturgy of the Hours, setting aside specific times and getting out my fancy book with the ribbons and flipping back and forth through the complexities of praying the Psalms with the Church. After having kids, I rarely find myself with enough free hands to handle all those ribbons, so I’ve found myself returning a lot more to memorized prayer, praying the rosary a lot more, sometimes counting my Hail Marys on the toes of the baby I’m nursing. The pandemic threw another wrench into my prayer life as it derailed all of our routines; but I’ve been finding a lot of joy in intercessory prayer, praying for the specific needs of others as a way of staying connected during this time of social distancing.
In my mind, a “successful” prayer life looks like having a regular time and place for prayer, but this season of having little kids means that the needs in my house are frequently changing, so my best times for prayer are constantly shuffling. I used to see this as a failure, but I’ve come to see it as an opportunity. It calls for flexibility and creativity and a little bit of stubbornness on my part, and God is always there waiting when I sort it back out again. Through all these changes, I’ve been really grateful for a class on prayer that I got to take my junior year of high school. It gave me the opportunity to explore a lot of different types of prayer, so I have this toolbox to pull from when things need to change. The monthly prayer challenges St. Pius is providing during this parish Year of Prayer are another great opportunity.
Another big challenge for my prayer life was when I had postpartum depression last year. I couldn’t find the energy to do much more than go through the motions of anything; but I want to put in a plug here for going through the motions. I don’t feel super in love with my husband every day, but I still act like I’m married. It’s in the choice to act lovingly that love transcends the fickleness of our human emotions and becomes a virtue, something we can practice and get better at. Prayer isn’t always emotionally gratifying; it doesn’t always make me feel good. God doesn’t always show up in the ways I would have chosen, with the highs of a retreat or the consolations I was looking for. But I keep showing up, even if imperfectly or irregularly or distractedly. And the gift is that God shows up, too, always, and turning my attention to God with whatever regularity I can muster helps me learn to see God in places I didn’t expect.