Prayer as Relationship: Running to Love
The following essay is the third reflection for our April focus on the spiritual practice of Prayer. Read more here about our exploration of the spiritual disciplines in 2025 through creative and reflective writing.
I just finished the edits on a book about 14th-century contemplative Julian of Norwich and her vision of a small, round thing the size of a hazelnut. It is called "All That Is Made". As I immersed myself in this project, I found that, like most things I write, it ended up being as much about prayer as anything. So much so that the subtitle the publisher and I settled on is “The Comfort of Contemplative Prayer.” I have found in my troubled and sick life that the answer to every torment, anxiety, and worry, to every trial and pain in my life, has been and will always be prayer.
Prayer is a relationship with God, the one who made the universe and each one of us. It is communing with love itself, which is a person, as it turns out, and not a thing. God is love, abundant, glorious, merciful, and full of kindness and grace, as we see in each person of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
I thank and praise God for all the small wonders and large graces in my life. I bring the things that are hard in my hands to him as my loving parent, running like a little child whose favorite toy has broken. He and only He can fix it, or do anything with it. I turn it all over to God, lifting it all before Him, giving it over. Sometimes, we examine the broken pieces together, and I am gently taught or corrected; sometimes, He repairs things as though kissing the wound better with balm and mercy; sometimes, He leaves it to dry and heal as a scar in my life that will remind me of His suffering or as a witness to others. Sometimes, it seems He does nothing at all, only smiles and receives, taking the detritus of my faith and the crumblings of my sin to His eternal workshop. I won’t see the outcome of His efforts there for a very long time, maybe never in this life. But I will trust God knows what He is about.
When I also began relating to God in contemplative prayer, I found I could fall deeper into this ocean of love that is welcoming to all. Though I still run to Him with problems, requests, intercessions, and petitions, prayer is now also about stillness, presence, and attention. It is simply being with God, even at times oneing with Him (as Julian would also call it). We are made for loving union with our creator.
In those deep places, I am given a great deal, but this is not the point of the time spent together. It is a blessing, and there is fruit here to share with others. Where love is, there will always be an outpouring, an overflowing. But love is its own end. It is our hearts in His heart that are the core, the reactor, the nucleus, the crux of this life lived as a sacrifice, of this giving and receiving tide of love. The energy that flows from that into the world is only a side-effect, a byproduct, a peripheral, though it is also welcome and wonderful. Seek first the kingdom, we are told, and all these things shall be added to us as well (Matthew 6:33). Hold fast to the center, to love, and all else will follow. Above all, we shall find that, as did Julian, everything about our lives and our relationship with God in prayer has its meaning in love.
Keren Dibbens-Wyatt is a chronically ill Christian contemplative, writer and artist. She is the author of Recital of Love (Paraclete Press, 2020), Young Bloody Mary (Mogzilla Books, 2023) and the forthcoming All That is Made (Herald Press, 2025), which is available for preorder now. Keren lives in South-East England with her poet husband and is housebound. You can connect with her @honeycombhermit on X and Bluesky.
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