How to Pray When You're Grieving (Even When Words Won't Come)

There is a particular silence that comes after loss. People who prayed easily their whole lives suddenly find they can't. You sit down, close your eyes, and… nothing. If that's you, this article is not going to hand you a technique. It's going to lower the bar, because the Bible sets it far lower than you think.

Start with the truth: God prays for you when you can't

"The Spirit also helps our weaknesses, for we don't know how to pray as we ought. But the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which can't be uttered" (Romans 8:26). This may be the kindest sentence in the New Testament for a grieving person. When you cannot pray, the Spirit of God takes your groaning, the sigh, the silence, the staring at the ceiling, and translates it. Your inability to pray is itself covered by prayer.

1. Borrow words from the Psalms

When your own words fail, use words God already approved. Grieving people have prayed Psalm 23 ("Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me") for three thousand years. Try reading one psalm aloud each morning, slowly, as your own prayer. Psalm 6, 13, 42, 61, and 88 were written for nights like yours. Psalm 88 famously ends without resolution; God included it so that unresolved prayers would have a home.

2. Pray one honest sentence

Grief shrinks capacity. So shrink the prayer. One sentence, said honestly, is worth more than a paragraph performed: "God, I miss her." "This hurts more than I can say." "Help me get through today." Jesus warned against thinking we'll "be heard for our much speaking" (Matthew 6:7). The prayer God wants is the true one, not the long one.

3. Let your body pray

In Scripture, prayer is physical: kneeling, lifting hands, lying prostrate, tearing garments. When words won't come, posture can speak. Kneel by the bed. Open your hands on the kitchen table. Take a walk and let each step be a syllable. Hannah "spoke in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard", and the Bible calls that prayer (1 Samuel 1:13).

4. Keep a two-line grief journal

Each evening, write two lines: one thing you need to say to God, and one thing, however small, you can thank him for. Some days the first line will be angry. Write it anyway; the psalmists did. Some days the second line will be as thin as "coffee" or "she texted me back." That still counts. Over months, those two lines become a record of a conversation you didn't think you were having.

5. Let others pray when you can't

When the paralyzed man couldn't get to Jesus, four friends carried him there (Mark 2:3-5), and Mark says Jesus responded to their faith. There are seasons when you are the one on the mat, and being carried is your part. Tell a few trusted people, plainly: "I can't pray right now. Please pray for me." If it helps to have strangers lifting you up too, share your prayer request with this community, hundreds of people here pray for requests exactly like yours every day.

A final permission

You do not need to protect God from your grief, impress him out of it, or resolve it before returning to him. "Cast your burden on Yahweh, and he will sustain you" (Psalm 55:22). Casting is not graceful. It's a heave. Do it as clumsily as you need to, he will catch it, and you.