Here's what stung: I thought I was praying. I wasn't. I was performing—auditioning for a role I'd already been given because I wanted to impress God and my friend. If I had held onto Paul's words in Romans 8, it would have saved me a lot of embarrassment. He doesn't say if we struggle to pray; he says because we struggle. He assumes we won't know what to say. That's not a bug in the spiritual life but a feature. The Spirit intercedes with "inexpressible groanings." We often feel we need to clean ourselves up before approaching God. Complete sentences. Theological precision. But Paul says the Spirit prays for us in a dialect that bypasses our eloquence entirely. Prayer isn't a speech we deliver to a judge. It's a breath we take in the presence of our Father. We do not pray to be heard; we are heard, so we pray. Whether we're quiet or chatty, confident or insecure, the pressure is off. We don't need to perform. We get to be with a God who understands us completely.