Don’t Settle for a Small Life; Practice Magnanimity Instead

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The 2022 film Father Stu tells the true story of Stuart Long’s improbable journey to becoming a Catholic priest. After a hard childhood, he struggles with alcoholism as he restlessly pursues greatness, first as a boxer, then as an aspiring actor. He accepts baptism in the Catholic Church to win the heart of the woman he loves, but remains skeptical of God’s goodness.

After a near-death experience, he begins pursuing a deeper relationship with God. The journey unsettles him, though. While receiving confession one day, he complains that God is “[messing] with” him. “Another term for that,” says his beleaguered confessor, “is grace, God’s grace. It appears you are the recipient.”

For all of Stu’s shortcomings, he didn’t settle for a small life, but instead pursued greatness—even if he initially did so in the wrong places.

Later, that drive toward greatness would be refined into magnanimity, the virtue that propels us toward “greatness of soul.” And as Dr. Greg Popcak and Lisa Popcak explained on a recent episode of their radio show More2Life, magnanimity is the virtue that keeps us from settling for less than what God wants for us.

Why We Settle

Few of us would claim to have an all-around “great” life, and most of us can identify at least one part of our life that feels—well, not so great: a marriage that has gone flat, a job that stopped meaning much, a grown child you worry about, an aspiration that has gone unfulfilled.

As Christians, though, what matters is what we do next: Do we settle for the way things are, or do we make the changes that will lead to our best life?

All too often, the Popcaks say, we settle for the status quo out of fear or a lack of imagination or simply because it seems like the easier path.

“God calls us to live lives that reflect the greatness of God’s grace,” Lisa Popcak said. “And it can actually be sinful to live a small life rooted in a lack of courage, or small mindedness, or the idea that ‘that’s just the way it is.’ God wants more for us than we can even begin to want for ourselves.”

Sometimes, too, people mistakenly dress up their inclination to settle for the status quo as an act of humility. But neither humility nor self-denial are about accepting less than what God wants for us.

“Being humble doesn’t mean leading a powerless, limited, unfulfilling life of settling,” Dr. Greg said. “It means acknowledging that I don’t have the first clue how to live an abundant life…but simultaneously professing that with God’s grace, it will be done.”

Magnanimity: Pursuing Greatness

The restlessness that Stuart Long felt—and tried to satisfy in so many ways—comes from our God-given dignity.

“God built a longing into all of us, a longing for a love that doesn’t fail, for relationships that fulfill us, for a life that shows off God’s grace,” Lisa Popcak said. “That restlessness you feel when part of your life is stuck on ‘just okay’…is God saying, ‘I created you for more than this.’”

The virtue that drives us to seek more is magnanimity, which St. Thomas Aquinas defined as the virtue that disposes a person to undertake great things worthy of honor. It does this while avoiding, on one hand, presumption (attempting what exceeds one’s capacities), and on the other hand, pusillanimity (shrinking from the good one is capable of—a fancier word for “settling”).

“Magnanimity is the virtue of living a life that glorifies God, a life that really shows you at your best, that enables you to participate in relationships that witness to the power of God’s love in our lives,” Dr. Popcak explained. “In a sense, living in a way that glorifies God and asking God every day, Lord, teach me how to respond to this in a way that would really help me glorify you.”

Three Steps for Moving toward Magnanimity

Just as people sometimes confuse settling for less with the virtue of humility, people also sometimes get confused about the pursuit of greatness. Stuart Long, for example, initially sought greatness in the boxing ring, then in Hollywood, and then in a romantic relationship. None of those goals were necessarily bad, but he was pursuing them as an end in themselves, not out of true magnanimity.

Jacob Popcak, a pastoral counselor with CatholicCounselors.com, joined Lisa and Dr. Greg to share a process for discerning what, exactly, we ought to be striving toward as we pursue the greatness God wants for us.

“I don’t want to assume that just because I want a Cadillac automatically means that God desires a Cadillac for me,” he said. “I want to understand what in my desires is really calling me to God.”

Here’s the three-step process he suggests.

1. Write the desire at the top of the page

Put it in plain words: to meet someone you could marry, to find peace in the marriage you already have, to get a particular job.

2. Ask open-ended questions that uncover the real desire

From a calm, prayerful space, ask questions such as:

  • What would it say about me, or what would be true about me, if this desire came to pass?
  • What would change about how other people saw me?
  • What virtues do I imagine I’d have, or would need to have, for this to come to pass?

For example, if you really want a new Cadillac, your investigation of the deeper desire might reveal that you are proud of your success, and you want to enjoy that success and be reminded of the gratitude you have for God’s hand in your life. You might identify the virtues you would need to achieve this goal as hard work, prudence, or patience.

Those revelations might prompt you to dig even deeper. In any case, you are looking for the deeper emotional and psychological underpinning of the desire.

“We’re really sitting with the desire,’ Flores-Popcak said, “and we’re unwrapping it like a present that God wants to give us.”

3. Bring the deeper longing back to God

Once you can name what lies beneath the desire (to feel capable, to be known as someone who didn’t give up, to belong), hand it to God. Ask God: “But how do you want to fulfill the deeper, more vulnerable underpinnings of my desire for more that you’ve placed on my heart?”

Pursuing a Great Life

Later in the show, the Popcaks applied Jacob’s process to a situation that a listener named Joan asked about. Her older sister cut off the whole family sixteen years ago, and Joan still sends letters, emails, and the occasional text in the hope that they might reconnect. Joan asked whether that was wise.

Dr. Popcak affirmed her basic approach, but also named where she might be tempted to settle. “Where we start to settle in these situations,” he said, “is believing that this one person is the only person who can give us healing.”

He invited Joan to ask what a restored relationship would say about her (perhaps that she is a good person, or that she hasn’t given up on her sister) and to bring those needs to God: “If you can identify that and then bring those to God, then he can start to fulfill those deepest longings of your heart, even if your relationship with your sister never improves.”

Rather than waiting on a relationship she can’t control to be her only source of healing, this approach invites her to ask God, “What’s your plan for helping me to heal this part of my heart and to move forward and celebrate the life that you want me to have?”

For more help discerning the path to a great life, reach out to a pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com.

Dr. Popcak’s book The Life God Wants You to Have also offers a faith-based plan for discovering the divine plan when human plans fail.

Even Jesus Had Needs; Here’s How to Make Sure Yours Get Met

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It’s an unfortunate fact of life that mind reading isn’t a real thing. If it were, maybe we would get the help and support we need without having to say anything.

Until someone invents a mind-reading device, though, we’re going to have to speak up for our needs — and we shouldn’t be afraid of doing just that, says pastoral counselor Rachel Isaac.

Isaac, who directs the faith-based success and performance coaching at CatholicCounselors.com, works with clients — athletes, executives, parents, spouses — who are learning to speak up for what they need without feeling guilty about it.

“If we have a need and we’re feeling neglected in meeting that need, we tend to think that maybe if I’m quiet enough, or if I yell enough, the other person will get the hint,” Isaac said on a recent episode of the More2Life radio show. “But this approach just hurts our feelings, hurts our relationships, and creates more distance between us and the other person.”

What Do You Need?

When she is working with clients who are frustrated that their needs aren’t being met by the important people in their lives, Isaac begins by asking a simple question: What do you wish the other person would notice that you need?

That’s usually an easy question to answer: I wish my husband would help more. I wish my boss understood how much I’m carrying. I wish my kids appreciated everything I do. I just wish someone knew I needed a break.

Then comes the tougher question: Have you ever actually told them what you need?

“Usually the answer is no, because underneath is this fear that if I ask for what I need, people will think I’m selfish, or I’m weak, or I’m too much, or they’ll just reject me altogether,” Isaac explained.

In other words, we often fail to say what we need because it feels safer to stay quiet and hope someone notices than risk being told our needs don’t matter.

‘Even Jesus Had Needs’

Isaac’s answer to that fear is simple and rooted in Scripture: “Needs aren’t weaknesses,” she said. “They’re part of being human.”

Even Jesus had needs, Isaac pointed out. He withdrew to pray, he rested, and he accepted help carrying his cross. If needs weren’t a weakness in Christ, they aren’t a weakness in us.

To be clear, Isaac acknowledges that the fear that keeps many people silent — that if we name our needs, others will ignore or trivialize them — is a real possibility.

But the solution isn’t to stifle our needs. Rather, the solution is to find another way to ensure your basic needs are met.

“How will you respond to ensure that you’re taking yourself seriously, whether the other person is taking you seriously or not?” Isaac said. “I always remind people that confidence isn’t a feeling, it’s a practice. So every time you communicate a need respectfully, you’re teaching your brain, ‘I can take care of myself without abandoning other people.’ And even more importantly: ‘My worth doesn’t depend on keeping everyone else happy.’”

None of this is incompatible with a faithful Christian life. In fact, helping others learn how to live God’s love in our relationships is part of our mission as Christians.

Three Questions to Ask

Isaac offers a simple three-question framework for moving from a passive stance toward actively making your needs known.

  1. What do I need right now? Before you can ask for anything, you have to know what you’re actually asking for. Get specific. “I need help” is vague. “I need my spouse to take the kids Saturday morning so I can take a break” is something someone can actually respond to.
  2. Have I actually communicated that need? Hinting or beating around the bush doesn’t count. Instead, aim for stating your needs plainly, out loud, to the person who can do something about it.
  3. If that need continues to go unmet, what do I need to do next? This question isn’t aimed at punishing the other person. It’s about deciding, ahead of time, how you’ll take care of yourself if the other person continues to ignore your needs.

“Expressing your needs and setting boundaries isn’t selfish or unnecessary,” Isaac said. “They’re acts of stewardship — for yourself and for your relationships.”

Not Either-Or, but Both-And

Sometimes people shy away from stating what they need because doing so feels confrontational. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Reframing your ask as good stewardship of the relationship suggests a different approach.

As Dr. Greg Popcak pointed out during his conversation with Rachael Isaac, naming your needs isn’t about dismissing the other person’s needs. Instead, in a healthy relationship, it’s about working together to find a way to attend to one another’s needs.

Take a moment this week to ask yourself Isaac’s question: What are you hoping someone notices that you’ve never said out loud? Then consider actually saying it. You can also practice this and other important reflection questions daily with Rachael’s digital journal Not Me First, But Me Too. 

For more one-on-one help learning to voice your needs and set healthy boundaries, reach out to Rachel Isaac or another pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com. You may also find Dr. Greg Popcak’s book God Help Me! These People Are Driving Me Nuts! Making Peace with Difficult People a helpful next step.

This School Year Doesn’t Have to Pull Your Family Apart

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Every August, it begins.

The new backpacks are purchased. Calendars start filling up. Sports schedules arrive. Teachers send welcome emails. Before long, evenings become a blur of homework, practices, dinner, laundry, and trying to remember who needs to be where tomorrow.

For many families, the school year doesn’t simply change the schedule. It changes the atmosphere of the home. Without intending to, we shift into survival mode. Our days become about logistics instead of relationships. We spend more time coordinating than connecting. And by the time May rolls around, everyone is exhausted.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

The Goal Isn’t to Manage a Busy Family

It’s easy to think the solution is becoming more organized. A better planner, a more efficient calendar, a color-coded schedule. Those things certainly have their place, but they don’t solve the deeper problem. The question isn’t whether your family will be busy. The question is whether your busyness is serving your family—or whether your family has begun serving the busyness.

The Theology of the Body reminds us that the family isn’t simply a collection of individuals sharing a house. It’s a communion of persons. The home is meant to be the primary place where we learn how to love, serve, forgive, communicate, and grow together.

That means the purpose of family life isn’t simply getting everyone where they need to go, it’s helping one another become the people God created us to be. Schedules should support that mission, not replace it.

Don’t Let Activities Become the Center of Family Life

Most activities are good. Sports teach perseverance, music builds discipline, clubs develop friendships. The problem isn’t that our children are involved. The problem comes when the calendar becomes the organizing principle of family life. When every evening belongs to an activity, families slowly lose the ordinary moments where relationships are built.

Research consistently shows that children don’t primarily remember the extraordinary experiences, they remember what life felt like at home. They remember whether dinner conversations happened, whether their parents laughed together, whether home felt peaceful, whether they felt seen.

Those seemingly ordinary moments are anything but ordinary.

They’re where trust grows.

Protect the Rhythms That Matter Most

Instead of asking, “How can we fit everything in?” consider asking a different question:

“What rhythms help our family stay connected?”

For one family, it may be protecting dinner together several nights each week. For another, it might be Saturday morning pancakes before the weekend fills up. Maybe it’s praying together before bed, taking evening walks, or making Sunday afternoons intentionally slower.

The specific ritual matters less than its consistency. Children thrive when they know there are predictable moments where everyone slows down enough to simply be together.

Those moments become anchors during the busiest seasons.

Let the Schedule Reflect Your Priorities

As new opportunities arise this school year, don’t just ask whether your child would enjoy them. Ask what accepting them will mean for your family as a whole. Will this leave room for rest? Will we still have time to talk? Will our faith remain something we practice together, or will it become one more thing we’re trying to squeeze in?

Sometimes the most loving decision isn’t adding another opportunity, it’s protecting the relationships that make every other opportunity worthwhile. That’s not saying no to your children. It’s saying yes to your family.

Remember What Success Really Looks Like

At the end of the school year, your children probably won’t remember every assignment they completed or every game they played.

But they’ll remember what your home felt like. Did it feel hurried or peaceful? Did it feel transactional or relational? Did they experience faith as another obligation, or as the source of warmth, hope, and stability in family life?

Those are the memories that shape them long after the school year ends. And they don’t happen by accident, they happen because parents intentionally choose connection over constant activity.

You Don’t Have to Figure It Out Alone

Building a connected family in today’s world isn’t easy. Culture constantly pushes us toward more activities, more commitments, and more busyness.

That’s why so many parents are looking for practical support—not just parenting advice, but ongoing encouragement and guidance from people who understand both family life and the Catholic faith.

That’s exactly why we created CatholicHÔM (Households on Mission).

CatholicHÔM offers parents faithful, professional coaching, practical resources, live events, and a supportive community designed to help families build stronger relationships while making faith the source of warmth in the home.

You’ll discover practical ways to strengthen family rituals, navigate parenting challenges, deepen your marriage, and create a home where your children experience faith as something joyful and life-giving.

Because this school year shouldn’t just be about getting everyone through the schedule.

It can be about growing closer to one another along the way.

Learn more about CatholicHOM and join our community today at CatholicHOM.com or by downloading the CatholicHOM app in your app store. 

Angry at God Over a Painful Loss? Don’t Walk Away; Let Him Know All About It

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For a month and a half, Walt watched his wife suffer through her final illness. A former Marine, he had always been the protector, and now he could only stand by.

“Vietnam was like a cakewalk compared to what I went through,” he told Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak when he called in to their More2Life radio show. When she died, his faith collapsed. “If there is a God — I hope there is, because I just want to go up there and settle this situation, him letting my wife suffer the way that he did.”

Walt’s anger was both natural and not an uncommon response to an unjust, painful loss like his. For many Christians, though, getting angry at God seems transgressive, even sinful — something to stuff or “get over,” at best.

But as the Popcaks explained, getting angry at God isn’t “out of line” at all. In fact, expressing that anger in a frank, matter-of-fact way is actually a hallmark of a healthy relationship with God — and a good start toward the long process of healing in the wake of a painful loss.

The Kind of Relationship God Actually Wants

“You said you hope there is a God because you’d like to go up there and settle this man to man,” Dr. Popcak told Walt. “And I think that’s great, actually. That’s exactly what God wants you to do.

“I want you to say all the horrible things that you might think you’re not allowed to say to God,” Dr. Popcak said. “And keep fighting with him every day until he gives you the answers that you’re looking for, because he will.”

Why is expressing that rage and anger the right thing to do? Well, for one thing, it honestly acknowledges that things aren’t as they should be.

For another, sharing your anger with God maintains an open, honest relationship.

And finally, bringing your wounded heart to God allows him to heal it.

We’re Behind Enemy Lines

When Walt raged against a God who would let his wife suffer, Dr. Popcak didn’t defend the suffering as part of some hidden plan. In fact, the world where a good woman dies in agony is not the world God made.

As Dr. Popcak put it, “As Christians, we live behind enemy lines.” That is to say, we live in a world that God made very good, but it is also a world damaged by sin. Suffering is a sign that something has gone very wrong, and Walt’s anger acknowledges that deep truth. The ache we feel in grief, the Popcaks say, is “an ancient memory that this is not how things were supposed to be.”

Honesty Keeps the Door Open

The real danger in grief isn’t anger; it’s shutting down.

“The only way that you will get stuck in this pain is if you don’t be honest with God, if you say, ‘That’s it, I’m done,’” Lisa told Walt. “But if you tell him how angry you are, if you tell him how scared you are, if you tell him how lonely and hurt you are, and keep allowing him to hear that from you, you’re allowing that door to stay open to him being able to heal you.”

This stance is backed up by Scripture and the tradition of the Church. Jacob famously wrestled with God, Dr. Popcak pointed out: “That’s how God proved that he was God. I think God might be calling you to do that, too.”

Pope St. John Paul II and other church leaders have pointed to the psalms as a template for expressing the full range of human emotions to God in prayer. The psalms, the pope said, express “joy, gratitude, thanksgiving, love, tenderness, enthusiasm, but also intense suffering, complaint, pleas for help and for justice, which sometimes lead to anger and imprecation.” In fact, about a third of the psalms express lament, complaint, and anger.

The saints contended with the fierce anger that Walt felt, too. St. Jane Frances de Chantal, after her husband was shot in a hunting accident, bargained desperately with God to let him live. That didn’t happen, and it took years under the spiritual guidance of her mentor, St. Francis de Sales, before she reached peace and forgiveness. She didn’t get there by turning away from God, but by turning toward God through honest, persistent prayer.

Healing Doesn’t Mean ‘Letting Go’; It Means Staying Connected

Keeping your relationship with God open is key to letting him heal your hurt, Lisa told Walt. She offered an analogy to the way a loving parent responds to a toddler who is really upset. That loving parent picks the child up and holds them close, but that can’t happen if the toddler runs away and hides.

And for Christians, keeping that relationship with God strong is a way to stay connected with loved ones who have died. As the Popcaks explained, grieving well doesn’t mean “moving on” and getting back to “normal.” Instead, grief calls Christians to find new, healthy ways to stay connected to the people we’ve lost.

“Death changes our relationship with our loved ones, but it doesn’t end it,” Dr. Popcak said.

“You can still talk to her,” Lisa told Walt. “Talk to her and say, ’Honey, I’m losing it down here. I’m so angry at God. I’m so frustrated that you went through what you went through. I miss you so much. Pray for me that I can get through this with God.’”

Grief calls us to cooperate with God “to bring good out of evil, to bring healing out of suffering, to bring meaning out of meaninglessness,” Dr. Popcak said.

Four Things to Do When You’re Grieving a Painful Loss

If you’re grieving and furious, here are a few things the Popcaks would have you try.

  1. Tell God the truth, all of it. Don’t edit your prayers down to what’s acceptable. Say the angry thing, the accusing thing, the frightened thing: Lord, I don’t understand why you let this happen, and I’m furious. Keep saying it until you sense him answering.
  2. Refuse to go silent. The temptation in deep pain is to close the door and handle it alone, and that’s the one move that keeps you stuck.
  3. Stay connected to the person you lost. Talk to your loved one. Ask them to pray for you. Keep a tradition alive, or live out something they taught you.
  4. Ask what God wants to bring out of this. Not “why did this happen,” but “what do you want to teach me, and how do you want me to respond?” Meaning is what grief most often lacks, and it’s what God is most willing to supply.

Committing to the Fight

None of this advice diminishes the pain, the Popcaks acknowledge. What they promise is that fighting the enemy alongside God is worth it.

“If you commit to that fight,” Dr. Popcak told Walt, “he will show you that he is God in a way that you will experience as merciful and loving and healing.”

If you’re grieving a loss and struggling to move forward, reach out to the faithful, professional pastoral counselors at CatholicCounselors.com. You may also find help in Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak’s book The Life God Wants You to Have, on discovering God’s plan when your own plans have fallen apart.

Here’s the Key to Helping Your Kids Develop a Mature Faith

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Diana, a mom in Columbus, Ohio, thought that she was doing everything right to raise her kids in the faith. They went to Mass regularly, prayed before meals, and sent them to the parish school.

But then her 12-year-old daughter made a comment that made her completely rethink her approach.

“Last week, my 12-year-old told me she thinks God is ‘more like a rule-maker than someone who loves us.’ And it knocked the wind out of me, because I realized she must have learned that from us,” Diana told Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak during a recent episode of the More2Life radio show that they co-host.

Her family had been so focused on practicing the faith as an act of obedience, she said, that they had not done as good a job helping their daughter actually experience God’s love.

A Critical Step for Developing Mature Faith

The Popcaks hear versions of Diana’s story regularly, and they are quick to affirm that the spiritual practices she described — Mass, Catholic education, family prayer — are genuinely good. But as Dr. Popcak pointed out, all the trappings of faith are nothing without love (1 Corinthians 13:1-3).

Lisa Popcak was able to relate to Diana’s concern. As a girl, she was riding home from school with a friend’s mother when a stunning sunset lit up the sky. Without preamble, the mom said from the front seat: “Oh Lord, thank you for blessing us so much with this beautiful sunset. You are such a wonderful artist. You love us so much to give us so much beauty in the world.”

“Nobody had ever acknowledged God as a giver, as somebody who loves us enough to give us beautiful sunsets,” Lisa said. “It cut right through me.”

That moment was a significant milestone in her faith life. And as Dr. Popcak pointed out, it is a critical step necessary for anyone to develop a durable, mature faith life. Instead of seeing God as “the great and powerful Oz behind the curtain,” kids need to encounter him as the one who, first and foremost, loves them in a personal way.

Diana understood this instinctively but didn’t know how to move forward. “I hear people talk about having a more personal relationship with God,” she said, “but that feels strange to me.”

How could she help her kids encounter the God of love?

How to Introduce Kids to the God Who Loves Them

The Popcaks’ answer to Diana’s question was straightforward: instead of talking about God, show kids how to talk to God…and how to notice his presence and influence in their everyday lives.

“We begin by just really bringing our family to God every day and saying, ‘Okay, Lord, teach us how to love each other the way you want us to love each other, not just with the broken human love that we’ve got, but really the love that comes from your heart,’” Dr. Popcak explained.

This can happen at the same time every day, possibly during dinner or family prayer time. After praying together in this way, talk about what “loving one another with God’s love” might mean for the coming day.

“Practically speaking, what would it mean for us to love each other with that thing that’s going on this afternoon with the family or that stressful thing that mom has to deal with or that test that you’ve got coming up?” Dr. Popcak continued.

At the end of the day, take stock of how the day went and thank God for the ways he helped you love one another throughout the day.

“And what you’re doing there is you’re building this sense that God cares about you and wants to help you build those relationships with each other and with him,” Dr. Popcak said. 

Over time, children begin to see that God isn’t watching to catch them doing something wrong; he’s present, generous, and paying attention.

Two Simple Practices to Try

While the Popcaks have written numerous books on how to raise faith-filled kids, they encouraged Diana to begin with two simple practices.

The first is what they call “noticing God’s gifts aloud” — the informal, spontaneous habit of thanking God for small blessings as they happen throughout the day. Lisa’s story about her friend’s mother spontaneously thanking God for the sunset is one example, but you don’t need to wait for something extraordinary: you can thank God for a morning filled with more laughter than tears, or for a chance encounter with friends, or getting through a doctor’s visit. These small acknowledgments, said aloud, teach the whole family to see God as an active presence in ordinary life rather than a distant judge keeping score.

The second practice is an end-of-day conversation called “thorns and roses.” At dinner or before bed, each family member names a rose — a blessing from the day, a moment where they saw God’s goodness — and a thorn, something they struggled with or worried about. The roses train the family’s attention toward gratitude. The thorns become an opportunity for a brief, natural family prayer: Lord, come into this. Help us to be here for each other. Help us to know your love even through the hard things.

Neither of these practices requires adding a single minute of formal prayer to an already-packed day. They ask only that God be part of the conversation that’s already happening.

Toward a Mature Faith

Diana was right to want more for her kids. Her family’s various faith practices are important. But research consistently shows that for kids to develop a mature faith that endures into adulthood, it is crucial that they experience how their Christian faith makes a positive difference in their daily lives.

In other words, they need to awaken to God working in their lives, helping them to navigate the difficult moments and helping them to become more fully alive.

For more help building a faith-filled home life, explore the resources and coaching at the CatholicHŌM app, where Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak and their team of pastoral counselors walk families through exactly this kind of growth. And for personalized one-on-one support, reach out to a pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com.

4 Reasons People Avoid Praying About Tough Problems (and How to Pray Anyway)

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It seems like it should be pretty simple. If you’re Christian and you’re dealing with a problem, you ought to take it to God in prayer, right?

Right. And yet…so often, we don’t. It’s a pattern that the pastoral counselors at CatholicCounselors.com encounter again and again.

And on a recent episode of the More2Life radio show with Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak, a caller named Colleen shared her own experience with this hesitation around prayer.

In confession, Colleen shared that she was hesitating to pray “because it hurts too much.” The priest advised her to push through that hesitation and pray anyway.

She took his advice, realizing that when she does, on the other side she inevitably experiences the “healing, hopeful, calming, release of my worry and my hurt.”

“I know I’m not alone” in shying away from taking her problems to God, she told the Popcaks.

She’s not, and the Popcaks used her call to talk about four common reasons that people avoid bringing their problems to God in prayer—and how to overcome those blocks.

Four Reasons People Avoid Prayer

1. You’re avoiding what you need to face

The most common reason is simple enough: we don’t want to think about the hard thing, so we don’t want to pray about it, either. If something is painful, revisiting it feels like making the pain worse.

“It’s all I’m thinking about, and if I have to actually bring it into words, I’m afraid it’s going to hurt even more,” Dr. Popcak explained.

But doing what Colleen’s priest advised (pray anyway!) is the way to go.

“It really is best to push through,” he continued, “because (when) we give God those particular problems, he gives us the grace to deal with them and think through them, and that’s a healthy thing to do, rather than running away and avoiding stuff.”

Staying away from prayer keeps the problem in the dark, where it tends to grow. Bringing it to God exposes it to the one who can actually heal it.

2. You’re performing piety instead of being honest

Many Christians grew up with the sense that prayer has to be reverent, composed, and properly packaged—“very polite,” as Lisa put it, and certainly not sharing any negative feelings you might be having.

She grew up in a family that took that approach to prayer.

“I grew up with a mother who was very, like, you have to talk to God a certain way, because he might get mad at you,” she said.

But when she met Greg, she saw how he prayed with total honesty through grief and struggle. “I was terrified when you were honest with God,” she recalled. “But what I saw is you never got hit by the lightning bolt. You actually got closer and closer to God when you were honest with him.”

Formal prayer is great, the Popcaks say, but it is meant to support, not replace, an open, honest relationship with God. When we pray in a way that guards our true feelings, that prayer experience can “hurt” because we’re not really connecting with God.

“God really wants an honest relationship with us,” Dr. Popcak said. “He would rather us yell at him and call him names and beat on his chest and scream and holler and talk about how much we hate him than not talk to him or just be polite.”

3. You keep asking God to take it away instead of asking what to do with it

God doesn’t always remove suffering; he often walks us through it, and those are different things.

As a little kid with terrible math anxiety, Greg wanted his parents to “just do the problems” for him. But no matter how much he cried and fussed, his parents never did. Instead, they sat with him, helped him calm down, and walked him through the steps.

“A lot of times, that’s what God wants to do with us,” he said. “He wants to walk with us so that he can show us how to be competent, how to not be afraid of things anymore, how he’s given us gifts to use.”

You can certainly ask God to take away your problem; after all, Jesus did that. But you should also pray that, if he doesn’t take the problem away, God will help you through it: “Show me how to respond to this in a way that will help me be my best self, in a way that will challenge the people around me to be their best self too, and glorify you.”

4. You know what God is asking, but you don’t want to do it

This is the one Dr. Popcak names from personal experience, offered with some humor. When prayer feels stuck and the other three reasons don’t quite fit, this is often the answer.

“I know in my heart of hearts what God’s actually asking me to do,” he said, “and I don’t want to do it because it’s scary, or because it’s painful, or because it makes me feel vulnerable. So then I get mad at God for asking me to do that thing.”

The solution is straightforward if not easy. “When I get over my big bad self and I do the thing, it gets better.” Prayer isn’t stuck because God is silent; it’s stuck because we already know the answer.

Trust the Great Teacher

If you find that you’re hesitating to bring your problems to God, think about whether one of these four common reasons might be at the root of the problem. Reframe the way you approach prayer, and as Colleen’s priest suggested, push through your hesitation.

“Really, what you’re doing is saying, I am going to trust in you, God, I’m going to trust that you love me enough to hear all my thoughts, all my feelings to be there for me, even when I’m angry at you,” Lisa said. “What you’re doing is inviting the Holy Spirit into all of it, so that you can deepen your relationship with God and you can find ways to find solutions.”

She continued: “We’re literally asking this great teacher to teach us how to be our best selves. We’re not saying, I’ll go back to God once I’ve become my best self. We’re actually going to him because he knows exactly where he wants to take us.”

For more help navigating personal and relationship problems with God’s help, connect with the resources and pastoral counselors at CatholicCounselors.com. And for help introducing your children to open, honest, everyday prayer, check out How Our Family Prays Each Day.