Constant pain makes it impossible to sit still and be quiet with God. How do I pray when my body will not settle?

“Have mercy upon me, O LORD; for I am weak: O LORD, heal me; for my bones are vexed. My soul is also sore vexed: but thou, O LORD, how long?”

David writes as a man whose bones and whose soul are both worn out, and he does not compose himself before he speaks. The Hebrew behind the word vexed suggests something shaken loose from its place. This is prayer offered in the middle of physical distress rather than after it passed, which means scripture already contains the kind of praying you think you are failing at.

“Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”

Paul is writing to a church under real pressure in Rome, and he tells them the Spirit joins in at exactly the point where they no longer know how to pray. The groaning he describes is not eloquent, it is wordless. For anyone whose prayer life has shrunk to short broken sentences between waves of pain, Paul is saying that is already prayer, and it is already being carried.