What if you're praying for the wrong thing?

If that situation isn't changing, try this instead.

I’ve been struggling with a relationship that has soured. It’s been haunting me for months now. This morning, I prayed about it like I have so many times before. And that’s when it hit me: What if I’m praying for the wrong thing? And what if you’re doing the same thing.

Here’s a little background…

This relationship soured partly because of something I did. Or at least it came to a head because of something I did. I found out near the end that there was frustration brewing on the other person’s end for some time. Little things this person took as slights from me that then helped them form opinions, and then those opinions grew into animosity. At some point, this person sent me a message that stung.

That’s when I reacted. Poorly. I didn’t take the high road. I didn’t take my time. I didn’t pray about it. I fired back a message in a blatant attempt to get them to feel what I was feeling — how they had made me feel.

From there, it snowballed. The face-to-face conversation didn’t resolve the issues. We both dug in. And we decided to part ways. That was it. It was over.

After finally praying about it and thinking through what happened, though. I realized two important things: 1) While this person could have done better, their intentions weren’t what I had determined them to be and I had even built up my own animosities; and 2) It was my responsibility to respond in love and grace no matter what. I didn’t do that. I got angry and operated from an ugly place, and not surprisingly ugly things came out.

I’ve apologized since then. I’ve owned 100% of what I did. A wise person once told me that even if you’re only 1% in the wrong and the other person is 99% in the wrong, you need to own 100% of your 1%. So that’s what I did. (I’m not saying I was only 1% in the wrong in this situation, by the way. It was much higher than that.)

My apology was pretty immediately accepted. And yet the relationship still isn’t what it used to be. That is to say, it’s now non-existent. I left the ball in their court to reach out once they felt comfortable enough. They haven’t.

I get it. Sometimes there are consequences for our actions. I wish it wasn’t so, but it’s true. But even though I understand that, I still grieve over the loss of this relationship. I still yearn for it to return. And I feel those feelings at least once a week, if not more.

So this morning during my abiding time, I prayed about it. I pray about it often, not surprisingly. The evidence is littered throughout my journal. In fact, here’s how I started out this morning:

“Father, restore my relationship with [XXXXX]. Do a work.”

But as I continued to pray and write, something else came out. Something I wasn’t quite expecting. Something uncomfortable. Something transformational. And it’s this part of the prayer that is the most difficult to digest for me. Here it is: