prayer-walkin', prayer-talkin'.

I've never prayer-walked before. Can you use the phrase that way? I was prayer-walking, I am a prayer-walker, I prayer-walked this morning?

I did. I went on a prayer walk today. It was by far one of the goofier things I've done with this church yet. But also one of the most powerful. Goofy, but good. Very, very good.

Let me describe the scene. There's a really huge field, bordered by some sort of industrial plant on one side with a view of the highway, and country land on the other side. 100 or so people are gathered under a white tent at the far corner of this massive piece of land. There's a ten minute sermon. Then, we are sent out to...walk, I guess.

A friend briefly describes this adventure, and the rules seem simple. Walk, pray, be back in 40. Got it. So, I walk. And I pray. And throughout that 40, something happens.

As I walk, I see others walking the field around me. Sometimes I pass close enough to see or hear them. Most of the time, we are figures too distant one to the other to make out words. I see some of them lifting their arms in prayer. Others kneel to the ground. Most just walk. I pass one or two speaking in tongues.

The day is gorgeous. Unbelievably big blue sky, I mean just, huge, expansive, awe-some. I begin in praise. I know that whatever else anyone feels when they step onto this land, I want them to feel awe. I praise, because I want them to praise. I feel my knees pulling me down, and I know I want to fall to them. To Him, more precisely. I know that what I'm feeling is worship, adoration, humility. I want to fall to my knees, and tell Him that I'm not God. That I don't want to be God. That I love Him, and will give everything at every moment to be close to Him. That I'm in. I am all in. And sometimes He scares me. I don't always understand God, and what I do understand bowls me over, knocks me down, winds me. But I'm in. I am in.

But then. I'm not in. I'm too scared to fall to my knees, because there are others around. I'm too scared to pray aloud. In a big, big field, with no one around! I think to myself, "Ash, who cares if someone were to hear you?" Maybe they'd think I was silly, or that my prayers were silly, or that I wasn't a very good pray-er. "Really? And yet you pray to God all day. You pray intermittently all day to the Creator of all of this. The Most High. The power. But you're more worried about the ears of men?"

Sometimes, I feel like a failure. I'm not doing what I want to do. In some ways, I'm not being who I want to be. Not to my Christian friends, and not to my non-Christian friends. Not to myself. Not to God?

He loves me anyway. He honored my prayers today, though I stood still and silent when my heart called me to more. I felt His presence today in a way that I never have, which I can only attribute to whatever happened on that field. Though I could not or did not step out for Him, He loves me.

I pray that He continues work in me. That though I am scared and timid, and self-absorbed...I would become less so. That though I live far from His heart so often, my knees would bend, my voice would lift, and that I would every day be whatever kind of "all in" I can be.