Unexpectedly Bad at Daily Prayer

You know, I used to think I wasn't all that bad at individual prayer, until I was held accountable to doing it every day. I used to think that God and I were pretty close, that we had a good relationship and were capable of some really great conversation, until I realized that I couldn't get through my initial "Come Holy Spirit" prayer before I got distracted...

After that initial shock at how easily distracted I was, and how difficult it was for me to even want to try to spend fifteen minutes focused on the presence of God, I began to try to dissect exactly why this was happening to me, and why I felt like such a little kid when it came to individual prayer.

Up to now, I've come to two pretty important conclusions that seem to lie at the base of a lot of this:

1. I don't know God (who He is, how He works, and what He thinks and feels, especially about me) as much as I thought I did.

2. Much more of my prayer time than I'd previously admitted over the past years has been spent just rattling ideas around in my own head, and if I'm lucky and/or awake enough, those ideas might be about God.

Put these together, and prayer doesn't seem like a very attractive way to spend my time--I can think about God while doing lots of things, and I get tired of fighting off other ideas that my brain (which I don't often allow to slow down) keeps running to for comfort. So, sitting still, trying to focus on the presence of a God who is so completely mysterious seems, in my heart, to be a waste of time. And that's where the problem comes in--in my heart, it seems like a waste of time. My mind will tell me otherwise--that it's good and necessary, that it's my number one priority, that God is available and wants to talk with me, that I can tell him anything, that I can trust Him to answer--but my heart knows better. My heart remembers all the feelings of being alone, immature, incapable, bored, etc. in my past prayer experiences, and it doesn't want to go there again.

Does all this mean that I've never had any fruitful prayer experiences when praying by myself? Absolutely not. I've certainly experienced great things, and God has communicated so many wonderful truths to me and helped me with very specific needs. But, it's only been recently that I've begun to realize just how much more God has had to do to reach me. In His mercy, He has still spoken to me in the midst of my almost constant distractions, my prideful inner thoughts, my self-deprecating inner thoughts, my immature ideas of Him, and my avoiding depth in prayer because I would rather not have to work that hard.

It's tough to admit, but it's amazing how often my prayer life has been defined by a desire to feel accomplished. I'd fight through the holy hour, the rosary, the Scripture, and deep down, I realize that I was trying to make God, and myself, proud of me. Instead of taking the opporutnity to actually interact with Him and get to know Him, I've settled for getting to know about Him, hoping He'd take care of the rest since I've been "doing my part" by jumping through hoops.

Can you imagine this dynamic in your marriage? Feeling like you're doing well and are a good husband/wife because you take fifteen minutes to sit with your spouse and rattle off the same words of "love and affection" that you learned as a child and say over and over again, all the while being focused on your own inner thoughts, fighting for just a few seconds of realization that your spouse is even present? We all know this wouldn't go over very well. Our spouses are deep mysteries, too, and it catches us by surprise that we don't know them near as well as we thought we did, especially early on in our marriages. But, we work our tails off to get better at communicating with them on a deep level, and come to appreciate them more and more deeply as time goes on. Much of this, however, is because our spouses are much less merciful and patient with our self-centered distractedness than God is, so their need for our attention and intimacy calls us to focus and to love them more and more.

So, God is all-powerful, and infinitely merciful and patient, but in the same way that we can't force our spouses to give us their attention, affection, and love, God cannot and will not force us to open ourselves to Him in prayer. So, yes, He is avaialable to speak with me, He is ready to listen, He is faithful to my requests, but I won't come to know Him, I won't come to desire to spend time with Him, and my heart will continue to look to "happy thoughts" to distract me during prayer because I won't come to delight in Him unless I work to truly be in His presence at least once a day.

Just like in any relationship, it's not going to happen all at once, but I can tell you from my own experience that the times when I truly focus on His presence, and not just my thoughts about Him, and fight those distractions, even when I feel like it's a losing battle, that I really experience Him responding. Often, it's in the last few moments, but it makes all the difficulties that came before totally worth it. My prayer recently has been that I want to learn how to love God. Sounds crazy, presumptuous, pietistic, I know, but it's gotta happen. I can't continue doing all this if it doesn't. And, the good news is, He's merciful--it's beginning to happen, and not just because I'm working harder or am somehow able to "be more perfect," but because I'm coming Him just as I am, bad at daily prayer. But, the difference is, I'm coming to Him.