mind

The first prayer that felt heard is a true thing. The glow is a true thing too. Epictetus's clinical rule applies even here: men are disturbed not by the things, but by their opinions about the things. The glow itself is fine. The opinion forming around the glow — that this is now the standard for prayer, that future prayers should also feel this way, that you have entered a new category and must not slip back — that opinion is what will turn the glow into disturbance later. The prayer happened. The prayer was heard, by your honest account. Let those two statements stand alone. Do not let them become a prediction or a measure for the next time you pray.

heart

Keep the glow. Drop the prediction. Tomorrow's prayer is its own thing.

connection

You stand in the line of all who learned to receive an answered prayer without building a rule from it — the desert father who did not write down the moment of consolation as a benchmark, the convert who stopped trying to repeat the road-to-Damascus experience and just kept praying.