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! My name is Rachel.

When I was a girl, I wasn’t sure how to pray. Should I use fancy church words?

Should I put my hands together and close my eyes? (Closing my eyes usually put me to sleep.) Should I pray for the whole entire world? And how could I pray for the whole entire world if I didn’t know the name of every person . . . Laboni, Dae, Aram, Vahe, Elizabeth, Paavo, Ianthe, José . . . or the name of every place and every plant and every animal?

Most of the time, adults did the praying for me. My dad prayed at dinner. My pastor prayed during church. My teachers prayed in Sunday school. Adults wrote the books of prayer that I read in the morning before school. Adults wrote the prayers that we said aloud in church (including Jesus, who gave us the “Our Father” prayer).

So I never learned how to pray using my own words.

I just guessed.

Um . . .

I felt pretty certain that my made-up prayers weren’t very good and didn’t really work.

. . . Can you hear me?

But I kept trying. I really wanted to say prayers to God using my own words, sharing my own feelings, asking my own questions.

One day—much later, when I had grown up—I was watching my baby son as he slept in his crib, and I wanted to say a special prayer that was just for him. I wanted to ask God to wrap love around him like a blanket. I decided to write down my prayer so that I could keep it and keep praying it as my son grew up.

I wrote:

May the angels guide you.

May the LORD hold you and

be with you for your whole life.

When he was a few years older, I wrote this:

God, walk beside him through the hallways at school. Sit with him in classes and in the cafeteria. Laugh with him, teach him, and bring him safely home after school.

As I looked at the words I had written, it was like all the puzzle pieces of prayer finally fit together! When I wrote down these prayers, I finally realized that I actually could pray. . . .

. . . and I haven’t stopped writing my prayers ever since! I like to call this prayer-writing, and I use prayer-writing everywhere! I carry a pencil or pen and paper with me so that I can write prayers anytime and anywhere: at the kitchen table, in my car, just before bedtime, at my church, in the coffee shop, at a friend’s house, on the beach, at the computer. Anywhere!

Today, after all these years, I can say that I love praying. I think if I had discovered prayer-writing when I was a kid, I might not have felt for such a long time that it was hard to pray.

If you feel like you don’t know how to pray (like I felt when I was your age), maybe I can help! You might enjoy prayer-writing as a way to talk to God.

This book has ideas to show you how to write prayers in your own words. You can read through the whole book and try all of the ideas together, or you can try one new idea every day. You can use these ideas to write prayers with your family, or you can write prayers that are just between you and God.

Your prayers don’t have to be perfect to reach God. You don’t have to use big or fancy words. Your prayers can be long or short. Your prayers may even tell a story using words or pictures. Your prayers can be happy or sad or grumpy. Your prayers can have misspelled words and crossed-out words. (God understands when we make mistakes.)

Just be honest with God. Use words that make sense to you. Write about what you’re feeling. Tell God when things are really great . . . and when they’re not. Have fun using prayer-writing as a chance to talk to God.

And—no matter what your prayer looks like on paper—please know that God is enjoying this conversation with you!

from Rachel