A Gethsemane Prayer

A Gethsemane Prayer - when you’re feeling crushed, desperate, small, at the end of yourself 

The sky was much too blue that day. I remember because it did not match my circumstances or inner landscape. 

I was holding my child in a field behind the school, where he had run away in a fit of rage and pain. It was not a gentle hug. It was a pressured hug so we could return him to himself, to safety, to us. The principal at his therapeutic school called my husband and me first, then the local police. While a patrol car circled the school, I felt the press of an iron sky in my soul. I prayed this, 

Good Father, I thought You created us for warm connection and meaningful communication. Remind me you are good. This cannot be how it goes for our child or our family. We want our child home with us, surrounded by love and siblings, in his own bedroom with clouds I painted on the ceiling while he was still somersaulting in my womb. Even though we do want to hear his desperate cries and give him the help he needs, we don’t want a terrifying ride in the back of a police car or a forced hospitalization. Are you even paying attention? Have you looked away? Do something! 

I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was my Gethsemane prayer. Gethsemane is an Aramaic word meaning olive press. As Jesus prayed in the garden where olives were pressed, he plunged into a sinkhole of dreadful agony. He was being crushed, praying for a way out or an alternative way to do what lay ahead. He prayed to his Father, 

Papa, Father, you can – can’t you? – get me out of this. Take this cup away from me. But please, not what I want – what do you want? Mark 14:36 (MSG) 

It was that last phrase that I never got to, the dash and after. I was too busy telling God what he couldn’t possibly want to listen for his reply. My world crashed, our family might never be the same, and the light behind my child’s eyes might just go out. And mine, too. My dread is palpable to me even now. That moment between a white-knuckled insistence and some kind of surrender was excruciating. I felt the ground give way between what I wanted and the possibility of hearing God. 

French bishop Françios Fénelon writes, “Even the now is God’s. You must live in the present in ways God has mapped out, not in ways you have drawn up for yourself.”¹ 

Here’s the surprise of that blue sky. In the middle of my anguish with sweaty palms and a heart beating outside of my chest, I was awash in inexplicable peace. Not at first. But at some point, the ground came closer, more weight-bearing. I felt held in God’s good hands, in the circle of a light that cannot be extinguished. I experienced my desperate smallness to be sure. I had imagined a calmer, simpler childhood for our children and a similar parenthood for us. It was a terrible, beautiful place to begin truly trusting the One who made us and keeps making us. 

But I also experienced, on that despairing day, the shift from a lesser-known circle of light to God’s personal face, turned toward me, my husband, and my child in a very particular way. God pressed down in love, mercy, and tenderness. God’s own presence. Beneficent mystery – what Richard Rohr describes not as unknowable, but as endless knowability.² 

I experienced the words of writer Mandy Smith, “It makes no sense that we can be saved by our smallness. There’s something in our smallness. Something big!”³ 

Life can be heavy. We are pressed on all sides. If you could use a Gethsemane prayer of your own, Lent seems a ripe season to invite you to write one. Perhaps it will be about family, circumstances, a relationship, a goodbye, the state of our hearts, culture, church, or the wide world. On the night of his unlawful arrest, Jesus was carrying everything for us. He still is. 

In “The Vulnerable Pastor”, Mandy Smith offers three prompts for writing a Gethsemane prayer:⁴ 

1. Start with Who you are addressing and what He is capable of. 

“We are not filling out paperwork to some faceless bureaucrat.” 

2. Name your honest desire in the face of anguish. 

“Feel the vulnerability of hope.” 

3. Leave room for God to love you in deeper ways even if circumstances do not change. 

“Give God the final word, trusting his goodness.” 

Use this less as a template for an outcome and more as a trellis, tying your prayer to God himself. Count on his presence. Jesus addressed his Father, but feel free to address any person of the Trinity as you feel ready. 

On desires - the longer I have tried to name them, the more I find my initial desires wanting. Still, I begin with what I have, usually a request for an easier, smoother, less painful road. No need to pretend otherwise. 

The Spirit meets us right where we are. And remains to beckon us further in and deeper down. Our initial desires point to deeper desires. Once we ask God what He wants and pause to listen generously, we may discover new possibilities. And having been pressed, we may find more of God’s imprint on us.