A Prayer for When I Cannot Feel God

Father, I am praying into what feels like silence. I used to sense You, and now there is nothing I can point to, no warmth, no nearness, just the flat quiet of a heart that has gone numb. I do not know if the problem is the depression or my faith or both.

I confess that I am frightened by this distance. I wonder if I did something to drive You off, or if You were ever as close as I thought. The absence aches more than I can say.

And still I am here, talking to You, which tells me some thread between us has not snapped. So I turn toward the silence and keep speaking, even when I feel nothing in return.

I ask only this: hold on to me when I cannot hold on to You. Let my faith rest on Your faithfulness and not on my feelings, which the heaviness has stolen for now. Keep me showing up, one honest, empty prayer at a time.

Your Word says You will never leave me nor forsake me, and that promise does not depend on whether I can feel it. Let it be true beneath my numbness.

I give You even this dryness, and I trust that You are present in the dark exactly as You are in the light. Stay, though I cannot sense You. Amen.