I just can’t imagine going through a crisis of faith so severe that you would leave your church without a lot of Gethsemane style prayers. And to have that replaced with a diet solely of rote prayers would… a big change.
For myself, I left Mormonsim without a crisis of faith. I just didn’t believe it so it was not a big deal. I’ve said here before, I clearly remember the moment when I realized I didn’t need to believe in God, at all, and it was one of the best moments of my life, up to that point. Kind of horrifies me now, but that is where I was at.
Some 20 years later, when a Catholic friend suggested that I should pray, it was more than an awkward endeavor. I felt like I was talking to the air, and felt very silly. So the suggestion was to pray the Our Father. After all that time, I had that prayer memorized. I think most Mormons do? Though I can’t recall why since Mormons don’t actually pray the Our Father. Anyway, it helped me get going with prayer. I could say it and think about what I was saying, what it meant, and spent quite a bit of time figuring out what it did, actually, mean. In depth, not a surface gloss over.
Then I found my own voice, which granted was repetitive, mainly because I didn’t trust that prayer wasn’t some kind of self fulfilling method to getting what you wanted. Ie, no one answering, just basic psychology. I was very careful to not pray for specific things that might betray my desire, rather, I wanted to know God’s desire…if God existed at all. My prayer was simple, for a long time, “lead me to you”.
It was not an easy journey. I didn’t sweat blood but there were times where I thought God was just really messing with me. What I came to read, eventually, as being wounded by Christ. I am still wounded, profoundly. For a long time after God led me to Him, my prayer was nothing more than thank you God, and please keep me with you. My new faith, firm in Him, but I had a worry that my wandering soul would get to wandering again.
Now, it just isn’t possible for my should to wander. It is stuck to Jesus. No, I am not perfect, I have my moments of doubts, but I know they pass. Echoes of my atheism, that I think will always just be there.
I prayed more to Jesus, as a convert. He is where my heart is. God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. What the Son knows, the Father knows, and so God knows me. Sees me. Hears me. I found it difficult to pray to the Father, for a long time. Still had “daddy issues”, for lack of a better term, with the idea of God as Father. That changed one day when I was praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament, and I was struck quite literally by a voice that I knew was Father. Scared me a little, because God scares me a bit. A friend says that is a good thing, holy fear. Which is probably good to have the fear of God when one has had a wandering soul like mine.
Anyway, I think your question has an element of fear. I understand that. There were points on my conversion where I felt God had led me to a cliff, and I had to either turn back or jump. I’d hang around the edge, sometimes for weeks, thinking and praying, “really, this is where you are leading me??” There was a point where I had to make a leap of faith, which was terribly difficult to do. But, I didn’t fall into an abyss, as I feared. I fell into God, which at times has been the experience of His wounds, at other times the experience of His heart.
There are Catholic prayers that I like and use, because they express what is in my heart. Most of the time I’m just winging it. I still pray rather awkwardly, but I’m ok with that. God knows what I need, I think very rarely, I know what that need is myself until He shows me.
You must remember, Jesus prayed in the Garden “thy will be done”. That is the heart of prayer, the reason for it, for us to align our will to God’s. Not for us to convince God to align His will to ours.
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