It’s Okay to Pray for Yourself First
I used to find those adages that advocate for helping ourselves first before helping others kind of annoying.
You can’t pour from an empty cup!
Always put on your own air mask in the airplane before trying to help others!
Blah, blah, blah!
I guess I found such expressions tantamount to advocating for selfishness, but now I see it otherwise. The fact of the matter is it is very okay to pray for ourselves first. Mainly because we deserve the love, care, protection, and attention from God (or Good) just as much as others do.
That’s true when talking about breathing oxygen or whatever we are able to pour from our cup into another’s. It’s not really about selfishness, so much as it is about worthiness or deservingness (which apparently is a word).
Until now, my prayers have been pretty monosyllabic:
Thank you, God.
Help me, Good.
Good will handle it.
But I’ve realized recently that there’s a reason people with more experience in faith, regardless of the religion, get poetic in their prayer circles. There’s a reason why the faithful spend a lot of time on their knees. They get specific, they seek help for others (often many others), they unload all their problems on God (or Good).
There is no right way to do this, but that sounds cathartic and very much something I need right now. I’m tired of venting to faithless friends and family. It feels like fueling a fire, rather than putting it out. But I realized as I started enriching my prayers that I was coming last in the list, and that’s kind of BULLBLEEP.
In reality, I need a lot of love and care, it’s my prayer, and there is nothing wrong with being first on my own list. No one likes being an afterthought, particularly in their own experience. The most spiritual might think otherwise. Faith is an exercise in humility, after all. But I’m talking about prayers grounded in surrender, where we’re asking for help, not a laundry list off the Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous.
I am focused on actively practicing self-love, probably as a direct result of this spiritual journey. Praying for myself and my own wellbeing in an active way feels like a daily exercise in self-compassion and self-love, rather than self-aggrandizement or a stroke of the ego.
So, if you’re dabbling in prayer, I suggest trying two things: list yourself, your problems, your hopes, dreams, and well wishes first. Second, feel free to go to town on praying for others. Take your time with it, but also there’s no need to get too specific about solutions. Leave the hard work to Good (or God), sit back, and see what happens.