“Lord, Help Me Want to Want To”A Reflection on Praying for Enemies
As I’ve referenced in sermons and pastoral conversations, many of you know that I come from a complicated family. Like any good, generationally Southern-bred American, we don’t air our dirty laundry—we monogram it, stuff it in a cedar chest, and only drag it out during funerals or emotional meltdowns. We don’t talk about the crazy; we let it simmer for decades and then unleash it when someone dies or tries to slip miracle whip into the egg salad instead of Duke’s as our Lord commanded (jk).
When my mother died in July of 2021, some long-hidden stories and truths surfaced—stories that carried deep pain and ultimately led to a few estrangements in my family of origin. What started as grief quickly evolved into grief’s more dramatic cousin: bitterness. And as the months rolled on, those old wounds didn’t stay neutral—they started to stink. Like, emotional Tupperware left in the back of the fridge stink. Resentment, generational trauma, unmet expectations—all of it marinated together in a slow-cooker of dysfunction.
And let’s just say I’ve kept more than one therapist gainfully employed since then. You’re welcome, mental health economy.
It’s from that place—not the mountaintop of spiritual enlightenment, but the mud-pit of messy family dynamics—that I come to the topic of praying for our enemies.
Jesus really knows how to ruin a perfectly good grudge.
Just when you’ve nestled into the sweet satisfaction of mentally rehearsing your courtroom monologue against That Person—complete with biblical thunder and righteous indignation—along comes our Lord with a gentle but infuriating reminder: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). Not ignore your enemies. Not bless their heart in that Southern passive-aggressive way. Pray for them. Like, actual praying. With words. To God.
Let’s be honest: sometimes this command feels less like a holy invitation and more like divine sabotage of our emotional momentum. Energy is wasted.
It gets worse. Not only are we told to pray for them, but to love them. Which is a tall order, considering some of them can't even merge properly on the highway, much less apologize for years-old wounds. And yet, here we are—gathered at the foot of the cross, holding our hurt in one hand and Jesus’ command in the other, wondering how on earth (or in heaven) we’re supposed to mean it.
Here’s the thing: loving our enemies and praying for those who’ve harmed us doesn’t start with some spiritual mountaintop where we sing “Just as I am” with our former nemeses. No, it usually starts in the lowlands—muddy and messy—with a prayer that sounds more like, “Lord, help me want to want to.”
That’s a perfectly acceptable prayer, by the way. Some of the holiest prayers are the ones muttered through clenched teeth. God isn’t offended by our emotional lag time; He’s remarkably patient. Scripture assures us, “The Spirit helps us in our weakness” (Romans 8:26). And weakness sometimes looks like mumbling, “Amen,” while secretly hoping that person steps on a LEGO when their bladder is full and they forgot to put on their glasses during a middle of the night trip to the toilet.
It’s important to know that God does not require you to feel warm fuzzies for your enemies before your prayers count. He’s not grading your emotional purity. What God desires is your honesty. Even David, that man after God’s own heart, prays some rather spicy things about his enemies in the Psalms—stuff about breaking teeth and scattering bones (Psalm 58:6, Psalm 53:5). But here’s the key: David prayed it. He brought the whole mess before God, trusting God to sort the justice and mercy part.
And maybe that’s the heart of it. We pray for those who hurt us not because we’re trying to be spiritual superheroes, but because we’re trying to be free. Free from bitterness that curdles into cynicism. Free from the exhausting cycle of imaginary arguments in the shower. Free from the false gospel that tells us we can only feel better once they apologize or get what’s coming to them.
Forgiveness is not about excusing someone else’s behavior or pretending the hurt didn’t matter. Forgiveness is about saying, “God, I don’t want this hurt to be the thing that defines me.” It’s about handing over the file folder labeled Injustice and letting God do the final accounting.
We don’t pray for our enemies so that God will let them off the hook. We pray for our enemies so that we can be unhooked—from resentment, from pain, from the slow poison of carrying anger like a treasure. The goal isn’t to be morally superior or saintly in some performative way. The goal is healing.
So if today all you can manage is, “Lord, I don’t even want to want to pray for them… but I’m saying that much to You,” then that’s holy ground. Keep going!
And God will meet you right there.
Pax et Bonum!
Fr. Ben +
