Tuesday, Week 3 - Finding Time to Pray

"The Lord, your God, is in your midst... he wil lrenew you in his love" (Zephaniah 3:17)

    What often keeps a person from daily prayer is the belief that one has to follow through perfectly or exactly every day. For instance, someone might decide to pray for fifteen minutes every morning. After two days of this, one of the children is ill, and there goes the fifteen minutes. The next morning it may be a flat tire or some other household emergency that takes another fifteen minutes.
    Rather than say, "It's no use, I can't find time to pray," a person needs to say, "Well, I wasn't able to have the space the last two days, but I can today...and I will. I'll begin again today.
    Spiritual growth doesn't just happen. It means not answering the phone or door during one's special time of prayer, not giving in to the long list of "must do's" which come to mind when we are finally quiet, and asking family members to respect one's quiet time by not interfering unless it's a real emergency.

    It's certainly easy to relate to the process Sr. Joyce describes in this reflection. This doesn't just apply to prayer, either. For me, there are a few things I try to motivate myself to do on a more regular basis... cook, run, work out, read, get to bed on time, get up early enough for breakfast... and none of these things seems to last more than a couple of weeks before I fall back into my lazier habits. But I do try to stay optimistic. I always try again. Sometimes I keep going longer than the last time I tried it. In fact, I feel like I may even be too comfortable with the idea of failing to keep these goals for longer than a few days.
    But I must continue to forgive myself, so long as I continue to push myself in the right direction. I do believe that I am taking steps towards becoming, slowly, a more faithful and more effective person. Unfortunately, it's not going to come as one great personal "renaissance". I must realize that in order to be the fullest person I can be, it's going to take time. I want to push myself. I pray that I will ultimately know that I am succeeding, but know that there will always be room to improve.