In third grade Sunday school class, I giggled when the Schroeder boy asked God for a new bicycle. We all giggled, knowing we weren’t supposed to pray for things like that. We were supposed to pray for the missionaries and our soldiers in Vietnam.

In my teens, I rolled my eyes at every “thee” and “thou.” Too flowery and old-fashioned for me. And our preacher’s voice in prayer at the beginning of a sermon? Too dramatic, too rehearsed, with the appropriate octavelong drop beseeching his “Gawd.”

Soon, my giggles and peeves turned to cynicism. No one was immune, not the struggling dieter who wanted God to keep her from overeating, nor the group in a prayer meeting that ticked off a review of sick relatives.

I began sitting through prayer meetings, biting my lip to keep from making sarcastic remarks about prayer lists — numbered requests to check off when things turned out the way we wanted so everyone could agree, “Isn’t God good?” Sometimes, I’d draw my mouth into a thin line to keep from sneering at all the other devices I wrote off as gimmicks designed to make us feel God would somehow hear us better.

Then in prayer group one morning, everything stopped, like the drop of the curtain on a theater stage, bringing the drama to its muffled halt. Only not in the room, not in the eight women in our prayer circle. In me.

Discreetly tucked away in a corner, where I had disentangled myself from what I labeled formula and shallow language, I heard my name.

“Barbara, would you lead us in prayer?”