Please Don't Tell Me "We're Praying For You", It's Insulting.

There's a way to pleasantly tell someone "I think there’s something seriously wrong with you" without them yelling back at you. It's four short words, "We're praying for you". There you go, four short words that's it. Try it sometime. 

A while ago now someone tried it on me. They walked up tome put their arm around me shook their head and said "we're praying for you". Being a “nice” person I politely smiled and said thanks. Really though, I wanted to ask "why?", I haven't asked for prayer, I haven't just announced the kind of disastrous news that invites prayer. I wanted to ask what is it about my life that you think needs prayer so much that you'd not only do it, but you also feel the need to come and tell me that that's what you were doing? When Jesus said it's best to pray behind close doors rather than on the street corner I don't think he meant go pray behind close doors then go to the street corner and let everyone what you’ve just been doing in secret. Seriously, telling someone "we're praying for you" is just like telling someone “I think there is something seriously wrong with you and we need some miraculous intervention from God to fix it”. Even if I have told the world that there is something seriously wrong with me that needs some miraculous intervention please don’t tell me “we’re praying for you” tell me you’ve baked a lasagna and you’d like to drop it off this afternoon. I know it's meant to be sweet but it's just not.

If you ever find yourself in my shoes and your not the sort of person to repeat the above rant My wife has great comeback. When someone told her "we're praying for you" she smiled and said "and we've been praying for you too!" She of course got the "so what are saying is wrong with me?" look but the person said nothing.