You keep praying. Even when it feels like nothing.
Spiritual dryness is normal in Orthodox life. It’s that season when your prayer rule feels like pushing a truck uphill in August heat. You stand before your icons and the words come out, but they seem to hit the ceiling and fall back down. God feels absent. You wonder if you’re doing something wrong or if you’ve lost whatever spark you had when you first came to Orthodoxy.
The Church’s answer isn’t complicated. You show up anyway.
What’s Actually Happening
The Orthodox tradition teaches that spiritual dryness happens to everyone. Sometimes it’s because we’ve gotten lazy or let sin creep in. Sometimes it’s demonic attack. But often it’s just God allowing the emotional consolations to fade so we can grow up.
When you first started praying, you might’ve felt something. Warmth, peace, maybe tears. That’s God’s kindness to beginners, like a father holding a toddler’s hand. But you can’t stay a toddler. At some point the hand lets go and you have to walk on your own. The father’s still right there, but you don’t feel him the same way.
St. Macarius the Great said to force yourself to pray even when your heart resists. God sees you striving. That’s what matters to Him. Not how you feel about it.
Why Dryness Is Actually Good
This sounds harsh, but dryness weeds out the people who came to Orthodoxy for an experience. If you’re praying because it makes you feel peaceful or holy, what happens when those feelings dry up? You quit. But if you’re praying because this is what Christians do, because God deserves our attention whether we feel like giving it or not, then you keep going.
C.S. Lewis wrote about this in The Screwtape Letters. The demon Screwtape complains that God lets humans go through dry periods specifically to see if they’ll keep praying when every trace of His presence seems gone. Prayers offered in that state, without desire but with pure will, please God most. They prove you’re becoming someone who loves God for Himself, not for what He gives you.
That’s theosis. That’s being transformed into His likeness. It doesn’t usually feel like anything.
What You Actually Do
First, don’t panic. Don’t assume you’ve fallen away or that God’s mad at you. Dryness isn’t punishment. It’s just part of the process.
Keep your prayer rule. Stand in front of your icons at the same time every day. Say your morning prayers, your evening prayers, whatever rule your priest gave you. Some days you’ll mean every word. Some days you’ll be thinking about what’s for dinner or whether you need to pick up milk. Doesn’t matter. You showed up. You stood there. You said the words.
St. Paisios of Mount Athos told people to shift from asking God for stuff to just praising Him. When prayer feels dry, we tend to get whiny. “God, why don’t I feel anything? God, give me back that peace I used to have.” Try doxology instead. “Glory to God for all things.” Even if you don’t feel it.
Talk to your priest or spiritual father. They’ve been through this. They can tell you if something needs to change or if you just need to keep walking. Sometimes all you need is someone to say, “Yeah, this is normal. Keep going.”
Go to Liturgy. Even if you don’t feel anything there either. Especially then. The Liturgy isn’t about your feelings. It’s the Church’s offering to God, and you’re part of that whether you feel spiritual or not.
What This Looks Like in Texas
You work a twelve-hour shift at the plant. You come home exhausted. You stand in front of your icon corner and your brain is mush. You can barely get through the Trisagion prayers before you’re nodding off.
That’s fine. God knows you’re tired. He knows you showed up anyway.
Or your Baptist mama asks why you’re “still doing all that” when you don’t seem any happier than before. You can’t explain that happiness isn’t the point. You just know you can’t not pray, even when it’s dry.
That’s faithfulness. That’s what builds a life in Christ.
The Long View
Spiritual dryness teaches you that prayer isn’t about you. It’s about God. He’s worthy of our attention, our time, our effort, whether He gives us warm feelings or not. And here’s the strange thing: people who push through the dry times often find, years later, that those were the times they grew most. Not because dryness itself is good, but because faithfulness in dryness builds something solid.
The Jesus Prayer helps. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” You can say that when you can’t manage anything else. You can say it at work, in traffic, lying in bed at three in the morning. It doesn’t require feeling anything.
If you’re in a dry season right now, you’re in good company. Every saint went through this. Every person who’s been Orthodox more than six months has been through this. You’re not doing it wrong. You’re just learning to pray like an adult instead of a child.
Keep showing up. That’s all God asks.
