Decades ago, the month before I turned 34, I wrote a prayer asking for God to use me and to provide me the strength to accomplish His will. From the moment I finished the prayer, I have struggled to live it out.

God
Nail my heart to a
Cross
If the sacrifice
Will help others
To see the way.

Baptize
With my tears
The senses of
Those skeptical of the world’s beauty
And potential.

Fill my cup
With bitter
Myrrh
If in doing so others taste your love.

Use my talents
To their limits
To roll back the stone
Enabling others leave of their deaths
And entry into life with you.

Use me.
Give me the strength
To accomplish your tasks.

A few years after I left my last university employer, I was still struggling to understand what the years there had wrought. I visited a counselor in hope of gaining clarity and releasing burdens. At one point, I shared the prayer with her. She nodded as she read it. “You got what you prayed for. Your prayer was answered there,” she said. That helped, but it also gave me even more to consider. Her insight generated more questions. Today, I think I have part of the answer.

Maybe the answer is that we should not be asking for the strength to do His will as if we aren’t already, but for the wisdom to see that the things that we have strength for are the things He wants us to be doing. Maybe we shouldn’t be asking for the persistence to stick with things we think we are good at and we believe has purpose but focus on the things we “naturally” have the commitment to pursue because it is His grace that gives us what we need to persist, commit and never surrender in those endeavors. Maybe our prayers are often already answered in ways that we don’t recognize as His response.