109. Foxhole Prayers: My Journey from Desperation to Real Faith
I can’t count the number of times I’ve prayed to get out of trouble. Not in the way a person of steady faith does, with quiet devotion, but in the frantic, desperate way a man does when he’s cornered, out of options, and terrified of the consequences that are about to come crashing down. In recovery, we refer to them as “foxhole prayers.” Just like soldiers pinned down in a battlefield trench, I would suddenly find myself under fire—except my battlefield was addiction, and the bullets were the lies I told, the broken promises, the near overdoses, and the trouble I couldn’t talk my way out of. Every time I was caught in the wreckage of my own making, I found myself crying out to God, “Please, just get me out of this one.” That’s the thing about foxhole prayers: they aren’t about faith. They’re about fear, and fear is something I know well.
I remember one night, in particular, when everything came to a head. I was sitting in my car, my body trembling from withdrawal, my mind screaming for just one more pill. I had burned through every dollar I had and every relationship that once meant something to me. I was staring at a handful of pressed pills I knew could be poison, but at that moment, I didn’t care. Pressed pills are counterfeit pills, made to look like real prescription medications, but often laced with deadly substances like Fentanyl. I knew that, and yet the craving drowned out the fear. My life felt like nothing but a long series of broken chances. In my desperation, I whispered, “God, please don’t let me die like this. Just help me get through tonight.” That was the kind of prayer I was good at—the bargaining kind. I’d say, “If you help me this one time, I promise I’ll change.” Very rarely, in ways I still can’t explain, the storm would pass. I wouldn’t overdose. I’d make it home. The cops would drive past me instead of pulling me over. The lie I told wouldn’t come to light that day. Every time I survived, I convinced myself it was luck—or worse, I’d take the grace I had been given and throw it away on more using. My prayers were never followed by action. They were escape hatches, not turning points.
I suppose you can say that foxhole prayers kept me alive, but they also kept me sick because every time I used one, I thought I could bargain my way through life. I thought I could manipulate my higher power the way I manipulated people. I treated prayer like a get-out-of-jail-free card. I wasn’t building a relationship with a higher power—I was exploiting it, just like I did with everyone else who tried to help me. And over time, that hypocrisy ate at me. Every foxhole prayer was proof of how broken I had become.
The truth is, I didn’t want to change. I wanted relief without responsibility. I wanted forgiveness without surrender. I wanted freedom without doing the work to earn it. And so, I stayed stuck in the vicious cycle of addiction—using, crashing, praying, and then using again.
When I finally entered recovery, I brought that same mindset with me. I thought to my higher power, “Okay, I showed up. Now fix me.” Recovery doesn’t work like that. Change doesn’t come because we beg for it—it comes because we surrender to it. For the first time, I began to learn the difference between a foxhole prayer and a real prayer.
In treatment, I heard other people share about their higher power. Some spoke with a kind of peace I didn’t understand. They weren’t begging their higher power to save them from the mess they created yesterday. They were asking their higher power to guide them today. That shift—from crisis to daily connection—was something I had never known. I remember one night in rehab when I finally broke down. I had been lying in bed for hours, sweating and shaking through withdrawal, my mind racing with shame. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t stop thinking about how badly I had ruined my life. For the first time, I didn’t bargain with my higher power. I didn’t say, “Get me out of here.” I whispered, “God, please help me stay. Help me face this.” It wasn’t a cry to escape the pain—it was a plea for the strength to walk through it. That prayer felt different. It wasn’t born out of fear—it was born out of surrender. That’s the night I believe my recovery journey truly began.
Recovery has taught me how to pray differently. My prayers aren’t bargains anymore; they’re more like conversations. Some days they’re simple: “God, help me stay sober just for today.” Other days, they’re raw: “God, I don’t know if I can keep doing this, but I’ll trust you anyway.” I still get scared, I still feel lost sometimes, but I no longer wait until the bullets are flying to get on my knees and pray.
The foxhole prayers of my past were rooted in fear of dying. The prayers I say today are rooted in hope for living. That’s the difference. Looking back, I see those foxhole prayers in a new light. They weren’t worthless. They were the cries of a broken man who didn’t know how else to reach out to his higher power. They were clumsy, selfish, and desperate—but they were also proof that somewhere deep inside me, I still believed there was something greater than myself. If I hadn’t whispered those frantic words into the dark, maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t be here to write this.
Today, my faith can’t just live in the foxhole. It has to live in the sunlight, in the ordinary, in the daily grind of recovery. I can’t wait until I’m cornered to reach out to my higher power. I need it in the morning before my feet hit the floor. I need it when I feel resentful in a meeting. I need it when I hug my family and realize how close I came to losing them forever. I need it not just in moments of desperation, but in moments of gratitude. Foxhole prayers remind me of who I was. Real prayers remind me of who I’m becoming.
Today, when I pray, I don’t ask my higher power to get me out of trouble—I ask it to keep me honest, so I don’t get into any trouble. I don’t ask it to erase the consequences of my actions—I ask it to give me the courage to face them. I don’t beg it to change the world around me—I ask it to change ME. That’s a prayer recovery has taught me to say.
If you’re reading this and you’re still stuck in the cycle of foxhole prayers, I want you to know something: those prayers mean something. They mean there’s still a part of you that hasn’t given up. But please don’t stop there. Don’t stay in the foxhole. Let those desperate cries become the beginning of a real conversation with a higher power who doesn’t just want to save you from trouble— it wants to walk with you into freedom. For me, prayer isn’t about escaping anymore. It’s about living, and in that shift, I’ve found a peace that I never thought was possible when I was whispering frantic bargains into the night.
And remember, if you’re struggling or know someone who is struggling, please don’t lose hope. If that had happened to me, I wouldn’t be able to help spread awareness today.
