I'll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful.I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.

She knew that was not an honest prayer, and she did not linger over it. The right prayer would have been, Lord . . . I am miserable and bitter at heart, and old fears are rising up in me so that everything I do makes everything worse.

That is to say, I pray for you. And there's an intimacy in it. That's the truth.

For me writing has always felt like praying even when I wasn't writing prayers.