Years ago, I remember reading Eugene Peterson: “my primary educational task as a pastor was to teach people to pray.”

I think that’s true for chaplains, too.

It’s not our only task. But it may be our primary educational task, the thing that we can teach.

The challenge in teaching about prayer is that many people want to learn how to pray. I say challenge because of why people want to learn how to pray.

• We want to learn so that we can get God to pay attention.
• We want to learn to pray right so that we can get God to fix our problems.
• We want to learn to pray exactly right so that we can get God to make our lives better.

Some people try to give people formulas for praying. “Get this many people to pray, say this many prayers, use this exact outline or wording, and God will pay attention, God will fix our problems, God will make our lives better.”

Some of those formulas quote Jesus: “Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened.”

I struggled with the formulas when I went to see Ed.

Ed had a heart attack. I know now that’s a generic word for several different problems, leading to several different treatments with several different outcomes. At the time, I didn’t know any of those things. I just knew Ed. And I knew Carol, his wife.

I knew that Ed was laying in the bed in ICU, not moving, not awake. I knew that Carol was standing by the bed, anxious, awake. I knew that I was the pastor coming to the room, supposed to know what to do, what to say, how to move heaven and earth to bring Ed back. This was a decade after my baby visit. I was more comfortable in the hospital. But this was still hard.

I don’t remember the conversation much. We talked about family, informed but far away. We talked about church, about Ed. And I knew that it was time to leave. So I asked if I could pray.

“God,” I said. And I stopped. And I started to choke up.

“God,” I said, “We know that you know what is going on. We know that you have power and you will do what you will do. We don’t want to tell you what to do. We always say that we want your will. But we can tell you what we want. And Carol wants Ed back. So please, can she have Ed back?”

I wiped my eyes. I said good-bye. I didn’t know what to expect.

Ed recovered over the next few days. 15 years later, he’s still going strong.

It felt like an honest prayer in a hospital room, finding the space between God’s will and our wants.

I grew up asking God for things, but I always gave him an out. “Not my will, but thine”, the words Jesus said in the Garden of Gethsemane hours before his death shaped my thinking. We can ask, but we’ll probably get the most painful outcome, and that will prove that we are as good as Jesus.

In that moment with Ed and Carol, I let go of the expectation of a bad outcome, exchanging it for an openness in conversation.

I’m not sure Carol knew what was happening in me, this conversation rather than ultimatum or resignation. For her, she simply wanted Ed back. But it has changed my hospital prayer.