Simplify Your Prayer Life

When was the last time you had a one-on-one with God? Were you at church? In bed trying to fall asleep? Were you in crisis or simply wanting to offer up your gratitude?

The way we pray varies widely, and it changes as we change. We may choose to …

• communally recite the creeds that proclaim our belief system;
• have a personal conversation with God, in our mind or aloud
• pray a rosary, which allows time to meditate on the life of Jesus through the Mysteries;
• practice imaginative prayer;
• recite the Divine Mercy chaplet;
• put on a praise and worship song;
• or we may have our own unique way to check-in with Jesus.

Not a Great Pray-er

A few years ago, I finally admitted: I was a terrible pray-er. For years I only dipped my toe into the prayer pool because I felt like prayers were words but didn’t necessarily make me feel any closer to God. I felt closest to Him during Mass, especially during reception of the Eucharist. His true presence under the species of bread and wine, placed on my tongue and consumed. This wasn’t just an act for the heart or mind. It was also a physical act. Taking communion engages the senses. But was that praying?

Instead of trying to better understand and experiment with my personal prayer style, I did what others recommended and prayed a rosary or said a novena. I tried just having a conversation with God, but I wasn’t exactly sure what to talk about and I would get tripped up on selecting the right words. I felt like something must be wrong with me because I did what people around me were doing, and yet, I wasn’t satisfied. (This is a recurring theme in my life, as my approach to choosing my profession, running my business, raising children, and in general, how I cultivate a deeper relationship with others is not typical.) However, as many wise people have noted, in the spiritual life, if you aren’t growing, you are dying.[1] My check-the-box approach wasn’t moving me forward. I was spiritually dying.

How We Pray

Praying is simple. Notice, I didn’t say easy. But we can complicate it when we’re told we should cover these topics or be in this disposition. The point of praying is to spend time together building a relationship. It shouldn’t be complicated.

Prayer allows us to be known. Prayer is letting God gaze at us. Fr. Rohr describes it like this: “The essential religious experience is that you are being known through more than knowing anything in particular yourself.” Give God access by unlocking the defenses around your heart so you can be known through.

Prayer is dynamic. The ways we pray change as we change – as we age, gain experience, accumulate more love, more loss, more insight. The way we prayed as children probably won’t fulfill us as an adult. As St. Paul said in Corinthians, “When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things” (13:11). Have you invested in finding a way to pray that fits who you are today?

Prayer is creative. Prayer is a uniquely human experience. When we put rules around how best to pray, we stifle the creativity God gave each of us. We all have a style and that style extends to how we approach what we do as a profession, how we parent, the ways we go about problem-solving – that style extends to ways to pray that most fit our unique style.

The Rules Are . . . There Are No Rules

For so long, when I shut my eyes and tried to feel a connection with the Lord, it seemed as though a steel door stood between us, both of us pressing our palms against the metal trying to make contact with the other. Was there some way to remove this barrier? Or was this just part of the human condition that I’d have to settle for? Should I be content to recite or to verbally download to God and consider that success?

There was only one problem with this. This way of praying left me feeling lonely for God. Deeply lonely. And He was the only one who could untie the tangled-up knots inside me. Failed motherhood moments, dissatisfaction in relationships, self-sabotage, and lots of anger that I couldn’t diffuse. No one but Jesus could fix the broken in me.

There is no “best” way to pray. Imagine being told how best to tell someone you love them. That puts constraints on our individual expression and is the equivalent of giving the same Hallmark card every time we needed to tell our spouse, “I love you.” If we don’t put rules around how to express our love to someone, why would we put rules around how we tell God we love Him?

The key is to identify the prayer practice that most allows us to be honest and vulnerable with God about what’s in our hearts. Having no rules doesn’t mean guidelines aren’t helpful to get you started. Without suggestions, all this freedom to pray in our own way could result in prayer paralysis. As the Catechism teaches, “Only when we humbly acknowledge that ‘we do not know how to pray as we ought’ are we ready to receive freely the gift of prayer. ‘Man is a beggar before God.’” (CCC2559).

A Few More Thoughts on Prayer

I’ll offer some general insights about prayer that may inspire you to step outside of the box during your time with God.

1. Prayer is dimensional: It can be mental, verbal, imaginative, even physical. Praying using my body (hiking, running, walking) helped me open up new spiritual spaces, which I would have never discovered had I not given myself the freedom to get creative.
2. Prayer isn’t about feelings. In my memory, I hear the voices of my theology professors at Franciscan stressing that how we feel isn’t the litmus test for something’s effectiveness. This often came up in discussions around the different energy we have in Catholic mass versus a Protestant service. The professors would comment that the measure of something’s effectiveness isn’t determined by the feeling it elicits. Worshipping God isn’t about us; it’s about Him. He may choose to console us, but that’s pure gift, not what we should expect each time.
3. Prayer helps us learn to die to self. When we pray, we place ourselves on the altar for God, making a sacrifice of ourselves to Him, for Him. It can wring us out, but it can also free us. Prayer allows God to show us how to swap out our selfish tendencies and open ourselves to loving in a new way. Dying involves letting go of our own ideas of right and wrong, letting go of the outcome, letting go of our strong will. God knows how painful this is for us, but if we let Him, He will scoop us up, tend to our wounds, wipe our tears, and remind us of all the ways He delights in us.

My false-starts with prayer were more about me than about God. I wasn’t invested in solving the existential puzzle, but instead let myself get distracted with work, raising small kids, trying to achieve and earn my worth. But my loneliness for God (which He put inside me) only grew.

And Then the Scales Began to Fall

My breakthrough with prayer happened during a series of events where I had no control of the outcome. High-achievers and power-house leaders do an impressive job believing the outcome depends on our “can-do” attitude. It can take people with these traits (me!) a long time to reach the end of themselves. But it will eventually come, don’t be fooled. Realizing how little control I had, I was forced to face things about myself that I didn’t want to see. But, weak and broken at the crossroads, I found God waiting for me and the scales began to fall from my eyes.

He told me I didn’t have to strive anymore; I had nothing to prove. His love for me wasn’t something I needed to earn. His love, He said, was pure gift and if I never did another thing for the rest of my life, it wouldn’t change how much He loves me. He didn’t love me because of what I could do; He loved me because of who I am.

My prayer time changed after this. I didn’t have to recite words as though they were a combination code that opened a safe. The safe was unlocked and He was inside, waiting for me. Don’t get me wrong, I still fall into cycles where I need to be reminded that He loves me and there’s nothing I can do about it (thank you, Fr. Shawn Monahan, for this tagline) but prayer now looks more like me falling into His arms, seeking His solace, His peace, needing to hear one more time that I’m enough as I am.

Now, simply breathing is prayer to me.

Now it’s your turn. Are you open to discovering a way to pray that is utterly unique to you. Get a read on where you are spiritually: Content? Seeking deeper connection? Too busy to think about it? Not sure?

Ask:

Am I satisfied with my prayer life?

Am I open to trying something new?

What is the state of my interior life? I.e. Do I spend time thinking my thoughts and feeling my feels? Do I process in the quiet times?

Take your answers and let them be a conversation starter with God.

Tip: It helps me to take long hikes in the woods, without my phone (or with it on Do Not Disturb), and just ask God questions out loud. Who cares if the squirrels look at me funny? One thing I’ve come to trust is that when we invite Him into our space, He shows up 100% of the time. You may or may not feel it, but prayer isn’t a feeling. Prayer is trusting. Do you trust Him? Sit with Romans 8:26 and see what happens.

[1] This has been attributed to William S. Burroughs, but some researches attribute this much farther back, to Augustine’s time.