Once upon a time, I was told that I was a good prayer. I couldn’t figure out how to respond.

If prayer is talking with God, then to be evaluated on my conversation skills feels strange.

Imagine someone saying, “I was listening when you were talking to Nancy. (She’s my wife). I was so blessed by your conversation.”

It feels odd.

And often, when I am praying with people at the hospital, they end up crying. So do I sometimes. We’re asking God for tough things in tough situations. We’re acknowledging difficult relationships. We’re telling God what we’re not sure of and what we desperately want. And that’s hard emotional work sometimes.

So some people think I’m a good prayer and some people cry when I pray. But here’s the truth. Most of the time I think people listening into my conversations with God would be pretty unimpressed.

Often, my conversations are simple. “Help. I’m sorry. God have mercy.”

Sometimes my conversations are repetitious.

When our daughter was little, I prayed with her every night, and we ran through the same list of names, not knowing what to add because we didn’t have anything new.

So “Jane and Manny and Andy and Joel and Bruce and Dawn and Erin and Allison and Adam” got prayed for by name every night.

Just like that.

And it wasn’t interesting. And it wasn’t exciting.

But every night, the five of us talked. Me and Hope and Father and Son and Spirit.

Every night, we were stopping, for a bit, and acknowledging God.

You do that, too. Right? Acknowledging God, repeating stuff, not always being exciting.

But we’re in good company.

At least twice, Jesus went away from crowds, he had his disciples close, and as he prayed, they fell asleep. Apparently, Jesus wasn’t an exciting prayer, either. And apparently, it was okay.