A Prayer for the Ten Minutes Before That Conversation

The phone is face down on the table. You have rehearsed the first sentence four times and it still sounds wrong. In nine minutes you have to call, or knock, or walk into the kitchen where they are sitting, and say the thing you have been avoiding for weeks. Your stomach is doing something unpleasant. This is not a metaphor. This is where you are right now.

We are not going to tell you what to say to them. We do not know your situation well enough for that, and a script rarely survives contact with a real conversation anyway. What we want to give you is something to say to God in these last minutes, because most people arrive here with nothing but dread and do not know that dread is allowed to be a prayer too.

What you can honestly say first

Before anything gets straightened out with the other person, something needs saying to God, and it does not need to be dignified.

You can say you do not want to do this. You can say you are angry, or frightened, or that you have already decided how it is going to go badly, and you would like to be wrong. None of that disqualifies you from praying. It is closer to the point.

He who answers before he hears, that is folly and shame to him.

Proverbs 18:13

That is not aimed at you here, it is aimed at the conversation ahead, but read it in the ten minutes before and it does something useful. It gives you permission to walk in still listening, rather than walking in with your defence already loaded. Most of us arrive at these conversations having answered in our heads long before the other person has said a word. Ask, in these few minutes, to be someone who hears first.

Praying for the person you're about to face, even the one you don't want to pray for

Here is the harder part. If this conversation involves someone who has hurt you, or someone you are afraid of disappointing, or someone you simply do not like very much right now, you may not want to pray for them at all. That is understandable and it does not need to be forced into something warmer than it is.

But there is precedent for praying for someone difficult on the way to meet them, and it does not require pretending everything is fine.

Jacob spent years dreading his brother. Esau had reason to want him dead, and Jacob knew it. On the morning of the meeting Jacob did something practical and something that looks like prayer at once: he arranged his family so the most vulnerable were furthest from danger, and he went ahead of them himself.

Jacob lifted up his eyes, and looked, and, behold, Esau was coming, and with him four hundred men. He divided the children between Leah, Rachel, and the two servants. He put the servants and their children in front, Leah and her children after, and Rachel and Joseph at the rear. He himself passed over in front of them, and bowed himself to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother. Esau ran to meet him, embraced him, fell on his neck, kissed him, and they wept.

Genesis 33:1–5,4

We are not promising your conversation ends like that one did. Most do not. What we notice is what Jacob did with his ten minutes: he did not spend them rehearsing his case against Esau. He put himself between his family and the danger, and he went to meet his brother's face. Whatever is about to happen for you, the honest version of praying for the other person might be smaller than affection. It might just be: let me see them as a person and not only as the problem in front of me.

Abigail is a sharper example. She was riding out to meet a furious man who had every intention of harming her household, because of her husband's foolishness, not hers. She did not pray that David would feel better about it. She went with a clear head, a real gift, and a plan, and she named the situation to him plainly.

Please don’t let my lord pay attention to this worthless fellow, Nabal, for as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name, and folly is with him; but I, your servant, didn’t see my lord’s young men whom you sent.

1 Samuel 25:25

Notice she did not defend the indefensible. She told the truth about her husband's folly and asked for mercy on behalf of people who did not deserve David's rage. If the conversation ahead of you involves you carrying blame that is not yours, or defending people who cannot defend themselves, Abigail's ten minutes were spent getting clear on the truth, not softening it.

A caution worth saying out loud

If the conversation you are walking into involves someone who has been cruel to you, or dangerous, none of this asks you to walk in unguarded. Being a peacemaker is not the same as removing every boundary you have built for good reason. Praying for someone difficult does not mean handing them back the power to hurt you again. If you are afraid for your safety, that fear is information, not a lack of faith, and it deserves a wiser response than a prayer alone can give.

Words for these last few minutes

You do not need a script. You need two or three honest sentences, said in whatever order they come.

You might say: I don't know how to do this well. Give me a gentle answer instead of the sharp one that's sitting on my tongue right now.

A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

Proverbs 15:1

You might say: I am still angry, and I am walking in anyway. Help me overlook what can be overlooked, and be honest about what can't.

The discretion of a man makes him slow to anger. It is his glory to overlook an offence.

Proverbs 19:11

You might say, simply: I don't want to do this. Go with me anyway.

That last one is not eloquent. It is enough.

Before you knock

Take one slow breath and say, out loud if you can, quietly if you can't: give me ears before I open my mouth.

Then go.

If you want to sit with this longer before you walk in, there is a short space for it at /pray.