Praying In Public

I absolutely H.A.T.E. praying out loud.

I have no problem bowing my head and silently praying in public. I often keep a running inner dialogue with God going throughout the day. But... I have always had issues with praying in front of other people. Doing anything in front of a bunch of people, really.

Tonight at Bible study I was asked to pray and it caught me by surprise. I accidentally gave the guy who asked a look and when he asked what that was for I replied that I don't like to pray out loud. Normally - every other time it has been expected of me - I have gone ahead, bit the bullet and done it. For some reason tonight, I declined and I have been feeling like a schmuck ever since. It is something that I suppose I just need to get past or work through or whatever.

I am a very private person. There have been a lot of things that I would like to write about - a class I have been taking, stuff in Bible study, discussions with friends, etc. but I do a lot of inner processing and usually don't give much input into discussion. I have also always been overly worried about people's opinions of me. It doesn't bother me near as much as it used to, but I still always have that awareness of "what will they think" in the back of my mind. Some of my friends have this blog address and if you are one of those people, know that I trust you more than I do most others. Especially with this little episode of emotional... whatever it is.

Back to the praying thing. I was eating out one Sunday with my group of "ratty little friends", as Mom puts it, and most of us had already begun praying silently when one person suddenly began praying out loud for us all. When this friend was done, they said "I don't think we should pray to ourselves". I wanted to say that I don't pray to myself, I pray to God, just not in a way that others can hear. I had to choke down my snarky side that wanted to shoot out "Matthew 6:5-6, read it and weep, sister". That's something else I need to work on. Snarky-ness is not good when one is trying to become a Proverbs 31-type lady.

Well, that's today's little shot of useless junk that probably didn't need to be said but that I felt like getting out anyway.