Many years ago, I gave up religion entirely.
Faith, however, is another matter.

There is, in my mind, a fundamental difference between the two. Religion is collective — a flock, traditions, structures, rituals, attendance. Faith is personal. Faith is a relationship. Like that of a child to a parent. Quiet, private, and deeply individual.

So yes, I am a believer. I choose faith, not religion.

Please — to my readers and subscribers — don’t rush to your shelves just yet to tear pages from my books or burn them. This is not a sermon. I am not here to persuade, recruit, or instruct. This is me reaching out, asking a question, and sharing something personal.

Mental health has followed me for as long as I can remember. I grew up without a father, raised by a deeply religious mother who moved through many denominations — Agape, Judaism, Christianity, Anglicanism, and others I’ve since forgotten. Church was often the only place where I had “proper” clothes. Outside of that, I remember having one T-shirt and one pair of shorts.

We would drive into the city, pull up to yet another strangely shaped building, and step inside our new spiritual home. Looking back, I’m still in awe of the architecture — gothic spires, rounded sanctuaries, sharp, jagged edges reaching skyward. Perhaps that’s where my early fascination began. I wanted to build things like that. Instead, I became a writer — capturing their allure in words rather than stone.

I share this not to lead you toward any denomination, but to ask about the one thing all religions seem to share, regardless of belief, structure, or tradition.

Prayer.

Artists have wrestled with prayer forever. Madonna’s Like a Prayer. Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer. Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Pied Beauty. Different mediums, different voices — yet the same reaching outward. The expressions vary wildly: whispers, demands, rituals, silence. But beneath it all lies the same yearning — a desire for connection beyond the tangible.

Which brings me to the question I’ve long wrestled with:

Does prayer hold power?

Throughout history, people have knelt, clasped their hands, closed their eyes, and prayed — silently or aloud — in moments of desperation and hope. At times it looks like begging. At times, pleading. If prayer is supplication, where does its power truly lie? In the words themselves? The structure? Or in the emotional weight behind them — the rawness of being brought to one’s knees?

For a long time, I set faith aside. Yet there were moments when the urge to pray returned uninvited: when my car broke down, when I lost my business, when I surrendered my dogs to a shelter. Guilt surfaced. So did the desire for forgiveness.

That, too, is a common thread.

Guilt. Forgiveness. Reckoning.

It wasn’t only desperation that triggered it — it followed harsh words, selfish moments, missed chances to be better. A quiet internal judge. And for years, the only relief I recognised was the act of asking to be absolved.

Two Christmases ago — as I write this, just days before Christmas — my father-in-law passed away. His family had been praying fervently for his recovery. When he died, people said it was “his time,” that he had suffered enough. Words meant to comfort. Still, the Christmas spirit vanished overnight.

Everyone grieved differently. My wife was in denial. Her sister was angry. Her brother carried everyone else’s pain until his own caught up with him later. My mother-in-law seemed to begin with acceptance and then move backward through grief’s stages. None of it followed a script.

Prayer stopped.

Watching my wife lose her father — the man she admired most, the spiritual head of their home in their Afrikaans tradition — was devastating. As the family writer, I picked up my pen and wrote a eulogy, shaped through her eyes. The minister read it at the cremation. The room broke apart in tears.

Months later, for her 40th birthday, I invited the family to a coastal town where her father had fallen ill. That evening, I read a letter I had written to him — but in her voice. As if she were speaking to her father one last time.

Slowly, I began to take on some of his responsibilities. Not by choice or declaration, but gradually, piece by piece. I believed — quietly — that this is what he would have wanted.

Around that time, I began praying daily. Not out of obligation. Not to ask. Not to seek forgiveness. My time in a mental health clinic had changed me. I prayed because I wanted to. Instead of pleading, I gave thanks. Life had revealed its fragility. I prayed for others. I stepped forward where I could, knowing I would never fill his place — only honour it.

The weight of responsibility softened. It became presence. Gratitude replaced fear. And in the silence after prayer, I felt something unexpected — not answers, but closeness.

So, does prayer make a difference?

Perhaps not in the way we imagine. Not always through miracles or altered outcomes. Perhaps the difference lies in the shift it creates within us — a quiet realignment. A conversation not only with something beyond us, but also with ourselves.

Prayer, for me, is no longer transactional. It is grounding. It is remembrance. It is gratitude.

And it has made a profound difference in my life — in me, in my wife, and in the world we move through together.

This piece is for my late father-in-law,

Henry John Wright (1947–2023)
You left behind something far greater than wealth:
faith, love, and enduring memory.