A prayer one word long

The last time you tried to pray, you quit halfway through the first sentence. It sounded like nothing. No shape, no gratitude part, no proper ending. Just a tired person talking into a dark room. So you stopped trying, and the silence has gotten a little heavier since. You haven't run out of faith. You've run out of words.

Then cut it down. All the way down. The whole prayer is one word, and the word is help. Not a list of seven requests. Not a speech about doing better. Just help, once, in the voice you've got right now. Flat, tired, maybe resentful. It's one of the oldest prayers there is, and it still works as written.

Long prayers ask for a calm you don't have today. One word can be said angry, crying, in the shower, at three in the morning with the light off. A swimmer in trouble doesn't give the lifeguard a speech. One arm goes up, and that's enough. On bad nights, the easiest thing to reach for used to be a cigarette. It took the exact spot where a word to God could have gone.

Say it now, before you finish reading. A whisper counts. Help. Then stop. There's no need to feel an answer, a warmth, anything at all. You're opening a line, not measuring a result. Your hands are free now, and one of them just went up. He's heard that word from every kind of trouble, and He's never hung up on it.