She said: A prayer tool

I am an awful pray-er. Truly awful, at least in the way that I expect prayer should be. I think, though, that this is the way many of us feel in our society. We're programmed to do, do, do. Our minds jump from one thing to the next. Sitting still without some kind of screen in front of us is just not gonna happen. I suspect that I am not the only one who secretly shrieks in dismay at the idea of quiet meditation, even as I intellectually accept the value of it.  Good grief, sitting still in silence with only my own words to fill my head sounds like the first level of hell to me.

It's no wonder I'm a bad pray-er.

Except...I know that prayer doesn't have to be sitting still in a quiet space with either my own words or no words. I know that it can take different forms. I have dabbled with different forms. I have tried walking prayer. I have tried prayer books. I have tried prayer journalling. I have tried praying while I do yoga (the sound of my loud breathing and crackling joints distracts me, however).

I have not been consistent with any of it, though.
The only consistent prayer time I have is my prayer time with my children.

Every night, I say a prayer with each of my kids. They are often fumbling, grasping for words prayers. I'm sure I leave a lot out that could be said. I definitely repeat a lot of the same phrases over and over. But I pray with them. For a moment each night, I am focused on the Presence of God-With-Us. For a moment my heart cries out to the Mysterious One. For a moment, I put aside the to-do lists and the i-don't-know-what-to-says and I just pray, whether I feel like it or not.

It's because of my kids that I have any real prayer life at all.

Let me be clear...This is not good that I rely on my kids for a prayer life; it just is. And though I have a lot of work to do on the prayer front, today I am thankful for one daily spiritual practice that is consistent and that we do together.

Even that consistency, though, needs evaluating. It's easy for me to pray for my kids each night. It's easy to pray for our little family. They are the most constant source of joy and fear in my life, so of course I'll pray for them, and I want my kids to hear me pray for them. But I also want to pray for people beyond our little family, and that's harder for me to do with consistency and with a specificity that my young kids will understand.

Enter...the prayer book.

I got the idea from a friend's Pinterest pin. It's just a small photo journal with photos of people we want to pray for. At the link, you will see a beautiful prayer book made with a scrapbooking kit. Mine are much simpler, as scrapbooking is no love of mine, but we are still loving our not-as-beautiful books. I made one book for each kid out of cheap $1 photo books from Walmart. On each page of the book, I put a small picture (printed on cardstock) of either a person or organization we'd like to pray for, and there's space on each page to add a small sticky note with particular prayer requests if we want, though we haven't done that yet.

I find these little prayer books helpful because they remind me to pray beyond the usual words, and they give us all an image to see as we pray. In addition to our regular prayers, we pray for one picture a day, and the kids enjoy checking to see who/what it will be today. The organization pages (which includes our church and school) also give me a chance to explain to them about some organizations that are doing important work, and they help us remember people we don't necessarily see. I've left some pages at the back of the photo book blank so we can add new faces/logos as we wish, and of course all of the pages can easily be switched out or around.

This is just one small but helpful tool in our prayer lives right now.

It's not the end of my quest for a better prayer life, though. I'm pretty sure that'll be a lifelong quest. Sometimes the quest feels a bit like drudgery. Like exercise or washing dishes ... something that really should be done even though I just don't feel like it. Sometimes I feel like it; sometimes I don't. But relationships are never about doing only what we feel like doing, and so I will try to join with my family in the quest for a more authentic relationship with our Creator, even when I just want to sleep.