Pay Attention to Me!

“Answer me, Lord! You are kind and good. Pay attention to me! You are truly merciful.” Psalm 69:16

The only reason I feel comfortable to pray so directly as “Answer me,” is because I know God is kind and good. This is not the “Answer me” of a parent to a child who is withholding information. It is not the demand of a judge to a seated witness, nor is it the repetition of an unheeded request. This is the boldness of acceptance.

But, this sort of boldness has a tenderness about it, rather than the brash insistence of someone always getting their own way. The child of God who feels her need deeply does not hold back from fear God will call her out for some sort of unbelief. The fact she feels that pain and cries out, even with words that imply God may not have heard, are evidence of both faith and love.

One does not freely express her needs to a person she thinks is disinterested. There is little earnestness, though she might raise her voice to try to make up for the perceived apathy. With God, we cry for Him to answer; and not with a quiet, socially acceptable whisper. From the furthest reaches of our being we exclaim without embarrassment. This is the person who has learned the acceptance Father God extends for his children in their pain.

You are kind and good! Here we discover why the voice is raised so freely. It is not a cry to turn a deaf God’s ear around; it is the outpouring of pain to the One she knows will understand. How many times, when we are at the bottom of ourselves, our emotions are past any point of composure, that we say, “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

Perhaps it is only our spouse, and maybe a lifelong friend, who we would allow to see us in such throes of emotion. When the tears will not stop, when the agony cannot be controlled, when we want to hide our faces from anyone who knows us for fear they will remember that face at a later time when we are actually doing quite well; we want to hide. We cannot bear anyone to see or hear our agony.

But, at the same time, we ache for someone to see us then, and understand. The surest soothing for our pain is actually not concealment. We wish for someone who will see us at our worst and receive us without any judgment about our excess of emotion. We desire for a hug that draws us in without comment or attempts at helpful phrases that tell us it will be ok. If we believed that, we wouldn’t have slobbered our tears through an entire box of Kleenex.

Oh the actually joy to know that God sees us at our worst, the times we want to lock the door and soundproof the room. We can even pull at Him, tug His shoulders, turn Him around and demand, “Look at me! Pay attention to me!” Even at my best, when my children would say that to me, my initial thought is, “But I AM paying attention.”

How lovely our Father is. He does not defend Himself first, but pays attention…even though He has been paying attention all along. God has allowed this gritty prayer in His Scriptures to allow us to be gritty as well. Pleasant sounding piety does no one any good when they are writhing in pain; physical or emotional.

How silly to speak of “Thee who fillest the skies with Thy splendor, and our lives with Thy bounteous care,” when one of His daughters is in the corner, throwing a fit over, well, over any number of painful occurrences. “God, hear me! Look at me! Turn around, stop in Your tracks and pay attention to me! I know you are kind and good. I know you are truly merciful.”

Go ahead, tramp down the flowery speech you have called prayer and wallow in the muddy language left behind. First of all, it is much more honest. Secondly, it is a way of coming to God that acknowledges He won’t reprimand us for such gritty or graphic language when it arises from pain and is pointed toward our Father who we know will respond out of His goodness, kindness and mercy.

Having suffered over three years of a constant headache, I can identify with those who suffer chronic pain. I now know why a bosses’ wife used to not come in for days at a time because of her migraines. I know truly understand the dear woman in a wheelchair who only ventured out of her apartment on good days, her favorite parrot perched on her shoulders. Those days became fewer and fewer as she wrestled with fibromyalgia. Jesus has endured all the pain you and I can imagine. Let it out, don’t feel like you have to grit your teeth or prove yourself to Him. He truly understands even our worst pain.