This week’s Reflections was written by Gregg TeBeest, chaplain at Brookings Health System.

For people of faith, prayer is very important. And it should be. It’s our primary means of communicating with God. In some cases — the life-and-death cases — prayer is all we have. So we pray and we ask God for help.

The frustrating thing about prayer is that sometimes we don’t get the answers we’re looking for. Or we seem to get no response at all. And we begin to wonder: “Does prayer really do any good? Does God care at all?”

Reading the Gospels will show that Jesus prayed. He prayed intentionally and intensely. And he asked God for things just like we do. But there was something unique about Jesus’ prayers. His prayers were perfect. They were perfect every time in what he asked of God and what he expected God to do — or not do.

As I meet together with hospice patients and their families I have been challenged in my prayer life. I have come to realize that unlike Jesus’ prayers, my prayers are not perfect. I have come to learn that what I have in mind for a patient or family member may not be what God has in mind. The result is that I am careful, for example, about praying for the healing of a patient. My natural desire is to want to fix people — to make them better. But God may have something else in mind. So I try to be careful in my expectations of God as I pray.

I recently came across an anonymous article that illustrates what I am learning in my prayer life with patients. It is entitled “Some Pray and Die.” It’s a great title. And it’s true. In the article an Army chaplain tells the story of how he prayed with a young pilot who was leaving on a mission. He prayed that the young man would have a long life and a happy ending. He asked the Lord to “hold him up … to not let him fall.” The sad part of the story is that the plane crashed and the pilot was killed.

When we pray and people die, we may wonder what’s wrong with our prayers. Or we may wonder what’s wrong with us or with God. The chaplain wondered the same thing. “What sort of an extra-special, super-powered prayer is needed to make everything turn out the way you want it?”

There are men who pray and come back. There are men who pray and yet don’t come back. It doesn’t seem fair or just. And it begs the question. Do some get “the breaks” in prayer while others don’t? Is that the way God works? I don’t believe so.

So, is there an answer? The Army chaplain has a suggestion. Instead of praying for what we want, we should learn to want what we get. “Nobody gets the breaks in prayer,” the chaplain says. “We get what God in his infinite love and foreknowledge sees fit to give. That’s not always the same as getting what we want. But it ought to be.”

I understand what the good chaplain is saying. And I know in my head he’s probably right. But it’s difficult for me to want what I get, especially if it’s death, especially for a loved one.

Is it difficult for you? If you’re like me, you don’t like death. And we don’t want people to suffer and die. So if wanting what we get is too difficult, then perhaps learning to at least accept what we get is the answer.

If we can learn to accept what we get, then perhaps we can begin to think of prayer differently and just continue to pray.