Faith and prayer

Prayer has always been a big topic for me. I want to know everything I can about prayer. I want my prayers to be effective. I want to express my heart. I want to hear the answers. Prayer is my lifeline to heaven and I want it as strong as it can be.

And while I’ve been great at ending the day in prayer, starting it in prayer has always been a tough habit for me to get into. I recall once hearing that in the morning you pray for divine help and protection in what you will do that day and in the evening you give thanks for the day you had and His hand in your life. I knew I needed that start to my day, I just never remembered.

At the start of this year I decided I was going to do things differently though. I was really going to make it a part of my life. I set up a spreadsheet where I would be able to keep track of my goals and how I was doing on them and would be able to mark each day that I remembered. But it was still hard to get into the habit.

And then I realized I could tie it to a habit I already have (kind of like how I got in the habit of taking a vitamin by putting it next to my cereal rather than in the medicine cabinet). I make my bed practically every day. There might be one or two days a year where I don’t, and those are generally days when I’m washing the sheets and don’t get them on till later. Since that was already a habit, I decided that right after making the bed I would kneel down and pray. And it worked!

It isn’t a huge difference in my life, not a noticeable one anyway. But by starting my day in prayer my days feel calmer. I feel more peace about what I am doing. It is an extra dedicated opportunity to talk with God. It has strengthened my faith, in large part because I regularly pray for more faith. The hard part is remembering that patience and diligence also go hand in hand with faith.