Why do you keep praying

I paused and asked myself that question.

Not because I didn’t have an answer, but because I wasn’t sure I wanted to admit the truth.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just feel like I need to.”

But deep down, I knew it was more than that.

I found myself speaking in tongues—not because I had nothing to say, but because I had too much to feel.

Whenever my mind started drifting toward places I didn’t fully understand, I prayed. I let the words come before the thoughts did. The rhythm gave me something steady to hold onto. It created a quiet place when everything inside me felt unsettled.

For a while, I thought that was enough.

Until I started asking myself a different question.

“Am I praying because I need guidance, or because I’m avoiding something within me?”

And that question stayed with me.

Because I realized there were parts of myself I had been pushing aside.

The parts that felt uncertain.

The parts that carried emotions I didn’t know how to explain.

The parts I had learned to hide because I thought being strong meant always having everything under control.

I had spent so much time trying to be okay that I forgot it was okay to not have all the answers.

“Why does acknowledging what I feel seem so difficult?” I wondered.

Why did I feel the need to silence certain emotions instead of simply understanding them?

Maybe I had confused strength with always being unaffected.

But maybe strength also looks like honesty.

Honesty such as-

“What I feel is real, but it may not be or should not be something that can or should be acted on. And that truth is not easy for me.

I don’t know what will happen to these feelings yet. Maybe they will fade with time, maybe I will learn to step back, maybe I will eventually let go. But right now, I just needed to acknowledge them instead of pretending they don’t exist”-Excerpts from my random musings on my note.

So I started sitting with myself a little longer.

Not to judge my thoughts. Not to fight my emotions. Just to understand them.

I began bringing the parts of myself I usually avoided into God’s presence without trying to explain them away first.

I still speak in tongues.

I still pray when my thoughts get loud.

But now, it feels different.

I’m not praying to escape myself.

I’m starting to learn myself.

Because I’m learning that every part of me—the confident parts, the uncertain parts, the parts still figuring things out—is worthy of grace.

And somewhere along the way, I realized:

The parts of myself I once tried to hide were never something I needed to be ashamed of.

They were simply parts of me asking to be understood.

Mo