May 3, 2015
Posted in: OolaChallenge
This month, I’m participating in the Oola Challenge. I’m sharing my reflections on the daily assignments. If you are joining me on the challenge, share your reflections in the comments.
May 3: It’s easy to get caught up in our thoughts. We overthink, re-think, over generalize, and jump to conclusions. The patterns of our lives and the world we live in make it easy to do. We wake up thinking, and we have a hard time falling asleep because our minds are running. So…Today’s #OolaChallenge is to pray about something as often as you think about it. This will require us to pray bold prayers. The things that take up so much space in our mind and thoughts usually make for the boldest prayers. Pray about your worries, your stresses, your fears, your questions, your blessings, your loves ones. Nothing is too great for God. Start by simply starting your day with a prayer and ending your day with a prayer. And if you really want to challenge yourself, whenever you find yourself thinking about something, let that be your cue to pray about it. Use today to try and pray about things as much as you think about them.
Ugh. I needed this one. Because it is a hard. Because it is such a departure from my daily mindset.
I didn’t used to be bad about praying. Prayer was an ongoing part of my day. Prayer was a spiritual discipline that I was very intentional about cultivating. Oh to be young and childless!
Prayer was easy when it was just me and B. He’s largely self sufficient in a way similar to how I’m largely self sufficient but sometimes I get tired of being an adult and cease to be self sufficient. T and W are not yet in that place and in the trenches of being desperately needed, it is so easy to let prayer fall to side to be forgotten. Prayer is reduced to the simplest of prayers. As I learned from Anne Lamott, “Help me help me help me” and “Thank you thank you thank you” are two of the most important to fall back on.
So today I prayed. I may have prayed my quick and dirty desperate prayers of motherhood but I also prayed my slow, intentional prayers. I prayed for my husband while he completed his weekend away at the church men’s retreat. I prayed for T, that he would make good decisions and grow into the person I know he can be. I prayed for W, that his body will continue to improve and that he is able to crawl. I prayed for W’s neurologist and the rest of the team that supports him. I prayed for T’s teachers. I prayed for my mother. I prayed my prayers of thanksgiving and I shared my joys and concerns.
Today was the first step in reintegrating prayer into my daily life.
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