6 Letting Go of Bargaining for Breathing: Prayer

6

Letting Go of Bargaining

for Breathing

Prayer

Pray without ceasing.

It is not enough to say prayers; one must become, be prayer, prayer incarnate.

I WAS SITTING IN THE BACK of the plane when it dropped, the kind that makes your stomach float. I had flown before, but not with turbulence like this. Usually, it was a bump or two, but this was different.

I gripped the armrest tight as the plane bucked again. A woman beside me gasped. The guy across the aisle swore under his breath. Then a sharper drop, and that’s when my thoughts started to spiral.

This is it. This is how it happens.

I bowed my head and started whispering under my breath: “God . . . please . . . just get me through this. Let the plane hold together. Let us land. I’ll stop running from you. I’ll live differently. I’ll go to church more.”

Then the plane lurched again—a drink cart shook against the wall.

“Please. Just get me through this, and I’ll take you seriously. I promise.”

That plane rattled all the way home, especially on the descent. I remember sitting there with every muscle clenched, whispering the same quiet plea. Hoping it would be enough. Then the wheels hit the tarmac, gifting us with a final jolt. We made it.

I survived.

Covering My Bases

Growing up, that was prayer for me—bargaining. It’s not that someone taught me to pray transactionally, it just happened.

My prayers typically followed that kind of pattern. They were about securing outcomes. I prayed before meals, before sports, before trips—always before. That seemed important. I needed to get ahead of things, to make sure I had my bases covered.

Dallas Willard was right, “I fear that many people seek to hear God solely as a device for securing their own safety, comfort, and righteousness.”

That was me. But here’s the strange thing; as I journeyed further into the illuminative stage, something began to shift—making all those requests feel gross, like I was using God. Yes, the more transformation I experienced, the more those prayers left me feeling anemic and incomplete.

This realization wasn’t sudden, but slowly like the turning of a season, I was becoming less interested in what I wanted, and more interested in what God wanted. I started caring less about my own security and more about my sanctity. It was both miraculous and illuminating.

What I didn’t realize at the time, was that the Christian tradition had already mapped this shift in prayer. In the purgative stage, prayer is typically petitionary—we ask, we seek, we knock. And it’s often fear-based. We need reassurance. We want God to intervene in ways that make our lives feel safe and manageable—and that’s okay.

But deep down I started hungering for something more—and that’s about the time the “Jesus Prayer” found me.

Praying with the Past

It began with the story of an anonymous nineteenth-century Russian pilgrim who struggled to live out Saint Paul’s call to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

The heart of the story unfolds when the pilgrim meets an old monk who introduces him to the Jesus Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

The monk tells him that true prayer is not about speaking many words but about cultivating an unbroken awareness of God’s presence. So he gave the pilgrim a task—repeat the Jesus Prayer three thousand times a day, then six thousand, then twelve thousand, letting the words sink from his lips to his heart.

That felt extreme, but I kept reading.

At first, the pilgrim reported that the prayer felt a little empty, a repetitive exercise without meaning. But over time, something happened. The words took root within him. No longer did he have to remind himself to pray; the prayer began to pray itself within him. He walked with it, ate with it, and slept with it, pulsing like a heartbeat.

The prayer was less about something he did—and more about who he was becoming.

Reading this, I was both inspired and skeptical: Could a simple prayer really change someone like that? And what about Jesus’ warning about vain repetition? Saying the same words over and over, thousands of times a day, felt like it fit that description. But as Trevor Hudson once pointed out, Jesus wasn’t condemning repetition—he was warning against vain repetition. That is, empty words spoken without meaning or substance.

So I tried it. Like the pilgrim, I took up the Jesus Prayer, repeating it under my breath.

At the time, I didn’t realize how old this prayer was. I was stepping into a long tradition, one that stretched back centuries. The Jesus Prayer wasn’t just a technique from an old Russian book; it was part of the prayer life of ancient Christians. Its roots traced all the way back to those same people who taught me about a Rule of Life—the Desert Fathers and Mothers. For centuries, their way of praying remained largely hidden within monasteries. But The Way of a Pilgrim, published in 1978 (the story I shared above), brought it into my hands.

I didn’t pray it three thousand times a day. I wasn’t a wandering pilgrim—or a monk—I was a husband and a father with a day job. But I could pray it thirty times in the morning. So that’s where I started.

The Way of a Pilgrim is a dangerous book if we think we have to imitate the pilgrim exactly. His practices fit his life. Trying to copy them for ours won’t work—we live in different places, times, and seasons. Mimicking monastic practices only leads to frustration and, eventually, abandonment.

Spiritual practices drawn from our monastic friends always need to be transposed into our own circumstances. Transpose is a musical term: It means shifting a piece of music into a new key while preserving its structure and relationships. The melody remains the same, but it is adjusted to fit a different voice—high or low, soprano or bass. So in the case of the spiritual practice of prayer, transposition might look like this:

Prayer—or any spiritual practice—should follow the same melody for monks and laypeople, but it must be set in different keys. The forms may differ in length and intensity, but they carry the same intention. This is not about watering prayer down or making it easier; it is about integrating prayer in ways that are sustainable for the life we are actually living.

A Thousand Little Returns

When I first started praying the Jesus Prayer, I expected a deep sense of stillness. Instead, I got distraction—wave after wave.

The moment I closed my eyes, my mind took off in a hundred directions. I’d remember something left undone, replay a conversation from yesterday, think about dinner or some small task I’d been avoiding. It was like my brain had been waiting for silence just so it could get louder.

At first, I fought it—I got frustrated, assumed I was doing something wrong.

So I explored different ways to avoid distraction. Some days, it was a prayer rope, the knotted strands keeping a rhythm as I whispered the words. Other days, I held smooth prayer beads, feeling their weight as I breathed in and out. And sometimes, I simply clasped a wooden palm cross, letting its shape remind me of the life I was aiming for.

Every technique sharpened my focus a little, but none of them erased distraction. For a while, I kept trying, convinced I could silence every wandering thought. Eventually, I had to accept that I couldn’t. At best, I could quiet their pull. And that’s when the real insight came—not in finding a better way to fight distraction, but in learning to sit with it, to notice it, even to befriend it.

It’s a bit like my neighborhood walks. I’d rather not get interrupted—I just want to keep moving. But sometimes I spot a familiar face and there’s no avoiding it. I get caught in a short exchange:

Did you hear about the coyote that got into our yard last night?

Or the storm that took down half the old oak?

I think I planted the pansies too late.

It’s funny—more often than not, I walk away from the interruption grateful.

Interruptions in prayer can be like that too. Thoughts interrupt, nudging their way in. But instead of avoiding them, we can simply acknowledge them: Oh, hey there. Noted. Thanks for the reminder.

And that’s what I’m learning: Distractions aren’t the enemy. They’re me—my worries, my unfinished thoughts, my life showing up in prayer. (Not a bad place to be!) So instead of treating them like opponents, I’m learning to befriend them. And in doing so, I’m also learning to pray.

The key is not to panic.

If you try this kind of prayer and find your mind wandering, remember you’re not doing it wrong. You haven’t veered off course—you’re exactly where you need to be. Distractions are normal. We all experience them. Welcome to the club. When they show up, don’t fight them. Just give a small nod, maybe even a smile, and gently return to the Jesus Prayer.

Over time I’ve realized that this small act of returning is the whole transformational journey in miniature:

That’s the transformational journey. It’s not an unbroken ascent but a thousand little returns, and a thousand more. Accepting this took the pressure off prayer. And with each return, I noticed my attention stretching a little further, growing a little stronger.

Gazing at God

And attention, I was beginning to learn, was prayer. Simone Weil wrote, “Prayer . . . is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God.”

That struck me—especially as someone living through the “attention economy,” where human attention is competed for and monetized. Seeing how valuable attention is, I was glad to be giving some of mine to God.

Still, it felt awkward at first, almost mechanical. I had spent years treating prayer as a transaction, something to accomplish—a list to build, requests to make, a special service to attend. It never occurred to me that prayer could be as simple as offering my attention.

But the more I sat in stillness, the more I saw how true it was. I wasn’t trying to get God to act. I was gazing at him. I was learning to look. And in doing so, I was learning to be with him.

It felt good to be moving deeper into illumination.

It was a relief to stop trying to achieve something in prayer—or get an answer—or even feel a certain way. Instead, I was just training myself to be present, to give whatever attention I could. And the more I gave, the more it grew.

Now I understood why monks made prayer the center of their Rule of Life. It wasn’t just a single practice among many—it was the foundation. Eventually, I followed their lead, weaving it into my daily rhythm. This training tool became the heartbeat of my Rule, not as a task to complete, but as a new way of simply being with God.

The Fruit of Prayer

One morning, I sat in my chair, experimenting with a new form of attentive prayer—using a single word to keep my mind present. I’d been practicing this for weeks, but this time was different. As soon as I closed my eyes, my mind wandered. Instead of fighting the thought, I returned to my focal word—love—a simple way to refocus.

The word barely left my lips before something unexpected happened. When I said the word love, it was like a single, solitary raindrop struck the interior of my heart and a great ripple of divine love raced across my chest. The only way I can describe it is to say that it felt like the purest and most potent form of joy, something infinite and indestructible.

And then, just as suddenly, it vanished.

I opened my eyes. The room was the same. Nothing had changed. But unbeknownst to me, a change had happened.

The next day I started noticing something strange: At mealtimes, I wasn’t reaching for second helpings. I wasn’t chasing the next bite. I was satisfied. And that felt miraculous.

Back in

Maybe you know the cycle: craving—indulging—regretting.

The Christian tradition calls this gluttony, a habit of using food or drink to fill some kind of vacancy within us; it’s what our appetite looks like perverted. I had tried all the usual tricks to fix this—smaller plates, drinking a full glass of water before meals, deputizing my wife to give me a look when I went for more—but nothing ever lasted. The vice wouldn’t budge. That’s why I was shocked when temperance—so foreign—began to feel natural.

Temperance is the opposite of gluttony. It reins in excess and brings balance to desire. It’s a form of loving that enjoys without overindulging, empowering us to say both yes and no at the same time.

A yes to pleasure and delight, and a no to excess.

A yes to enchiladas, and a no to seconds.

It was liberating. I didn’t have to will myself into restraint. I wasn’t trying to resist. I just finally felt satisfied. Surely this is what Richard Foster meant when he wrote: “By themselves the Spiritual Disciplines can do nothing; they can only get us to the place where something can be done.”

I had spent years trying to fix myself—trying to get the grain out of the ground. But that’s not how transformation works. My job was to sow and wait for the harvest.

Wanting More, Getting Less

The virtue of temperance was intoxicating. Experiencing it made me crave virtue more. If change was possible in one area, maybe it could happen in others too. I wondered if I could trade my other vices for virtues—wrath for gentleness, lust for chastity, vainglory for magnanimity.

The thought excited me: Could I recreate that prayer moment again?

So the next day I returned to my chair, hoping it might happen again.

I sat in silence, following the same steps. I focused on my breath, on my word, on the stillness. I waited, heart open, straining for that ripple of joy. But nothing happened. Just my own restless thoughts. So I began petitioning God, asking for more virtue, more transformation. Lord, do it again.

But God didn’t.

And here’s where you can learn from my mistakes. It’s easy, during the illuminative stage, to start chasing mystical experiences. Mystical simply means a felt awareness of God’s action in our lives—something immediate and intimate, like my “ripple of joy” moment. These spiritual highs are real and meaningful, but they can easily take center stage. Before long, we’re no longer seeking God himself—we’re seeking the feeling. And the experience becomes an idol.

The great spiritual masters all warned against it.

Evelyn Underhill repeatedly warned, the desire for mystical experience can become a subtle form of self-love.

And Anthony Bloom warned us of spiritual greed, “which consists of wanting to have more and more of God at a moment when you should be put on a diet . . .”

Mystical experiences, I had to learn, are not the point of illumination. They may come, but they are not the measure of our maturity. If anything, my craving for them revealed my immaturity.

Real love isn’t about seeking moments of intense connection. It’s about staying. It’s about dwelling. Showing up when the feelings fade. Being faithful in the long, slow work of transformation, even when it feels like nothing is happening at all.

A Slow Unraveling

Several months later I took a long overseas trip, and somewhere along the way the temperance faded. By the end of the trip, I was back to my old ways—overeating, overindulging, reaching for more when I knew I’d had enough.

I was devastated.

I didn’t think this could happen. I assumed that once virtue took root, it was permanent—that once my character was formed, it stayed formed. But as Thomas à Kempis teaches throughout The Imitation of Christ, virtue is never something we simply possess. It must be watched over, practiced, and renewed. Left unattended—it can begin to slip away.

I think that’s what happened to me during that two-week trip.

Without realizing it, I made a slow trade: negligence for vigilance. Temperance had been a gift, but it was also a responsibility. I couldn’t take it for granted. I had come to see myself as invincible and I let my guard down, making little compromises here and there.

And this is another hallmark of the illuminative stage: Relapse. We make strides. We experience moments of real growth and transformation. And we think we’ve arrived.

But virtue isn’t a destination—we never arrive. We’re either walking forward or backward. We’re growing or withering, expanding or shrinking.

My relapse was humbling. And that was the point. God wasn’t just interested in refining some of my individual vices; he was interested in transforming my overall way of being—from pride to humility. Something we’ll explore even more in

What Remains

Even if the virtue didn’t last, I am still grateful for the taste of temperance, of divine-like love coursing through my appetite. I’ll never forget it. And I guess gratefulness isn’t the only thing that remains; my simple prayer practice remains too—this modest act of attention.

I haven’t practiced it perfectly. Some days I’ve skipped. Some days have been boring. Some days, calming. I’ve been at it for over a decade and I’m happy to report it’s a habit. I don’t have to think about it very much. It’s settled into my breathing, becoming a piece of me.

To be sure, I’m not praying without ceasing yet, but I am praying with less ceasing, and that feels good. Occasionally, the words rise on their own in the grocery store, or on a bike ride with my nine-year-old, and yes, sometimes during turbulence.

Here’s my current precept from my Rule of Life:

Practice prayer

In the morning, I dedicate five minutes daily, Monday through Friday, to the Jesus Prayer, breathing in and out the mercy of God. This time allows me to connect with Jesus, calming my mind and centering my heart. On weekends, if the days feel full, I give myself permission to take a break, allowing space for rest and flexibility.

And if you’re interested in learning how to practice it yourself, here’s how I do it.

How I pray the Jesus Prayer

I light a candle and then sit in my prayer chair—I like returning again and again to the same place. The more I do, the easier it is to form a habit.

I sit comfortably, keeping my back straight. Although sometimes, I lean back and kick up my feet. On cold mornings, I hold my coffee cup in both hands. If I’m especially distracted, I hold my wooden palm cross.

Next, I close my eyes lightly—not tightly. I want the least amount of tension as possible.

Then, I take one big breath, like I’m about to go down and touch the deep end of a swimming pool.

Then I begin inhaling and exhaling.

As I inhale, I say quietly in my mind:

“Lord Jesus Christ.”

Then, when exhaling I say:

“Have mercy on me.”

And I do that slowly, over and over again until my five-minute timer goes off.

I try not to move my lips—I want my mind and lungs in sync more than my mind and my mouth. Finally, I try to sit as still as possible. I don’t make a rule of it; if my nose itches, I scratch it.

And that’s it—sitting, breathing, praying.

Holding Both

Looking back, it makes sense why I saw prayer the way I did. In the world I grew up in, salvation was framed as a transaction. If something as profound as salvation worked that way, why wouldn’t prayer?

But the further I journeyed across the transformational path, the more that changed. Prayer stopped feeling like a formula. Now, it’s about formation. It’s about offering my attention, settling into stillness, and learning to gaze. It’s easy to see why the early Christians made prayer the foundation of their training life.

My shift in prayer didn’t happen overnight—it took time. And for a while, I even overcorrected, convinced that petitionary prayer was second rate, or something to leave behind.

But I don’t see it that way anymore. Petitionary prayer isn’t bad or selfish. Jesus taught us to ask, seek, and knock. The Psalms are filled with raw, honest requests. Bringing our needs to God is part of what it means to be human. The mistake wasn’t in asking—it was in thinking that asking was all prayer was.

It’s like only reading the first chapter of a novel and never moving on to discover how the story unfolds. I kept repeating the same kind of prayer, exhausting myself with requests, never realizing there was more to the story.

So these days, I’m back to praying for protection and giving thanks before meals. In other words, my praying life has grown more balanced. I’m learning to hold two things together—petitionary prayer and attentive prayer.

Balance sits at the heart of the illuminative stage, but it doesn’t come easy.

Whether you’re learning to walk or learning to pray, it takes time, missteps, and probably a lot of bruises. But eventually God gets you on your feet. And as we step, our prayers become simpler and steadier. François Fénelon describes this transformation beautifully—it’s worth reading slowly:

Growth in prayer is indicated by growth in simplicity and steadiness in our attitude. Our conversation with God resembles that with a friend. At first, there are a thousand things to be told, and just as many to be asked. After a time, however, the words diminish, and the pleasure of being together does not. Everything has been said, but the satisfaction of seeing each other, of feeling that one is near the other, can be felt without conversation. The silence is eloquent and mutually understood. Each feels that the other is in perfect harmony with him, and that their two hearts are continuously being poured into each other, becoming one.

That’s the goal—oneness. A heart drawn into deeper union with God. Not merely learning to pray without ceasing but slowly becoming love itself. Nothing takes longer than learning to love. It takes a lot of time. In fact, I’ve come to believe that this is the very purpose of time.

So what do we do in the meantime—while we’re waiting for God’s kind of love to ripen within us, while we’re learning how to let prayer shape us into the likeness of Christ?

That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out, and that’s where we go next.

In Sum

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