When people say "thoughts and prayers" during a tragedy do you think they mean it or is it just appropriate to say to someone going through something?

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »

Everyone is different. If someone on SW asks me for a prayer for someone sick, I really stop, right then and there, and say a genuine prayer because I can feel their genuine pain. I do believe in the power of prayer to heal.

But I also have a cousin who hasn't ever bothered to call me. Her husband just died, and she is a diabetic who needs to have her foot amputated, and she has decided,(according to another cousin),to just let nature take it's course and allow herself to die of gangrene.

I sent her a card, that has all the appropriate sentiments, and I sent her money for her husband's funeral, for which she hasn't thanked me, but I just can't bring myself to genuinely pray for her. She has a child that is young enough to need care, and she has sent him off to stay with his older brother and has decided to orphan all of her children.

I can't bring myself to pray for someone so stupid and selfish.

Valentine · M

@4meAndyou Sounds like she has a shed full of stuff happening. Maybe a little prayer for the children.

4meAndyou · F

@Valentine I will, and thank you for pointing me in that direction. My cousin is a fundamentalist Christian of a rather extreme sort, and historically, when her doctor told her she would die if she got pregnant again, my other cousin told me that she told her doctor that she would pray for God to close her womb. It was like she had a death wish back then, and she did manage to live, somehow, but still has the death wish.