Praying While Sick

What does it mean to pray when we are sick?

Sickness hit our house over the last couple of weeks. It cycled from one body to another, as these things do. Days stretched together and time blurred. Kid screen time limits were out, and TV-streaming for tired parents was in. Amid chicken noodle soup, I regressed to my adolescent sick food comforts of Canada Dry and brown-sugar cinnamon Pop-Tarts (do you have an equivalent?). I spent most of my time balancing work, rest, and childcare. Underneath obligations, I danced with a familiar question: How do I pray when I’m sick?

Sometimes when I’ve been sick, I jettison spiritual practice. Anything that resembles effort beyond bare responsibilities can feel overpowering and therefore unnecessary. But sickness is a vulnerable time. The body fights to be well. The psyche opens into a wider space where feelings and longings normally kept at bay seek permission to emerge. Isn’t sickness exactly the time to pray? For me, sickness is decidedly not the time to expend effort praying, but rather the time to practice receiving grace. And isn’t that what prayer is all about?

Sickness is an invitation into a different kind of prayer, the prayer of receiving.

Here is what my praying while sick experiment looked like this time around. I share my experience with the hopes of hearing from you: Do you pray when you’re sick, and if so, how do you do it?

Sitting cross-legged in a chair in silent meditation seemed Herculean and unhelpful. I chose to lie down instead, allowing my body to rest and my breath to settle. I set my Insight Timer for the typical seated time, but this time a pillow cushioned my head and a blanket warmed me while my thoughts receded into a larger stillness. I closed my eyes. Sleep seemed near, but so did grace.

Photo by Drew Taylor on Unsplash

Morning and evening prayer worked well. I usually pray a simple morning and evening prayer through my community’s prayer book, or adapted “breviary,” and I found the ten-minute Psalms and prayers comforting and doable. I curled in a soft chair, sipped tea while greeting the day or night, and this focused my heart toward a divine direction, even though my hazy mind did not remotely follow, and did not care about, the meaning of each prayer or verse.

Strenuous physical activity would have taxed my recuperating body, so instead I revisited the practice of yin yoga with renewed appreciation. Placing myself in simple yoga postures, and holding them for five minutes or so, allowed me to rest and release tension in my body while also entering into meditative silence. One of my old friends, Josh Summers, runs a beautiful Substack that features yin yoga instruction. I highly recommend it.

I also found the Jesus Prayer immensely helpful, as well as the one-line Psalm that desert mystic chronicler John Cassian recommends: “O Lord, Come to my assistance. O God, make haste to help me” (Psalm 70:1). Weaving these mantra-like prayers throughout my day helped weave an awareness of divine love around me, even if I didn’t feel it. Falling asleep in a yin yoga pose, helping my kid with homework while nearly falling asleep? “Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.”

The Christian mystics have long experienced divine breakthroughs amid times of often serious illness. Hildegard of Bingen received her visions of divine light while enduring excruciating pain. Teresa of Avila, the 16^th-century Spanish mystic who teaches friendship with God, struggled with poor health her entire life. Therese of Lisieux, the 19^th-century French saint who illuminated a humble, small way to God, died of tuberculosis at 24. These, and so many others, offer examples not of spiritual masochism but of passionate seekers who turned to God in their bodily vulnerability and need and found divine love eagerly embracing them in both presence and absence. Experiencing sickness is the time to realize the truth of Therese of Lisieux’s words: “If we cannot go to great lengths for God, God will go to great lengths for us.”