The Days I Pray and Still Feel Distracted

I wish I could say that when I sit down to pray, everything else politely leaves my mind.

It doesn't.

A few mornings ago I started praying and, maybe two minutes in, remembered that I needed to order a replacement part for something. I have no idea why my brain decided prayer was the ideal moment to bring this up. I hadn't thought about the part since the previous afternoon.

I tried to ignore it.

Then I started wondering whether I'd written down the model number.

Back to prayer.

Thirty seconds later I remembered somebody I needed to call.

This is not unusual.

For years I felt mildly guilty about it because I had an idea of what serious prayer was supposed to look like. You sit somewhere quiet, concentrate on God, pray with great faith, and presumably don't spend part of the time wondering whether you remembered to put the garbage bins out.

My actual prayer life has rarely been that cooperative.

There are good mornings, of course. Sometimes I open my Bible and one passage holds my attention for quite a while. I pray about people I care about, thank God for specific things, and somewhere along the way twenty or thirty minutes pass without me noticing.

Then there are mornings when six minutes feels like forty.

Both happen.

I Used To Fight Every Wandering Thought

My solution was basically to become stricter with myself.

Focus.

Come on.

You're praying.

That worked beautifully for approximately eight seconds.

Then I'd notice that I was now thinking about not thinking about other things, which is an impressively useless way to spend prayer.

At some point I stopped treating every distraction like an intruder.

Sometimes the thing that interrupts my prayer is actually something I should pray about.

If someone's name keeps coming into my mind, perhaps I don't need to push it away so I can get back to my official prayer. I can pray for them.

If I'm worried about a meeting later, I can mention the meeting.

If something unfinished keeps bothering me, maybe I need to write it down, get it out of my head, and continue.

Other times the distraction is just nonsense.

I don't think there's a deep spiritual meaning behind suddenly wondering where I left a screwdriver.

I write that because I've occasionally made prayer harder than it needed to be by examining every thought as though it arrived carrying a message from heaven.

Sometimes you forgot where you put the screwdriver.

There Was A Morning I Nearly Gave Up

I remember sitting in a quiet room trying to pray after sleeping badly the night before.

I was exhausted.

Not dramatic or anything, life-is-falling-apart exhausted. I had simply stayed awake too late, gotten up early, and was paying for it.

I read the same paragraph in my Bible three times.

Nothing stayed with me.

Then I started praying and couldn't keep one thought together for very long. I finally said, “Father, I'm really tired.”

I sat there for a bit.

That was probably the most truthful part of the morning.

Years ago I might have forced myself through another fifteen minutes because stopping would've felt like failure. That morning I prayed for a couple of people, thanked God for the day, and got up.

Later, after I'd eaten and become more recognizable as a human being, I prayed again while walking outside.

Much better.

I don't know why I once believed prayer only counted if I completed it under ideal devotional conditions.

Peter Falling Asleep Makes More Sense To Me Now

The disciples falling asleep in Gethsemane used to irritate me.

Jesus asks them to watch with Him during one of the most serious moments of His earthly life, and they fall asleep.

Really?

Then you get older.

You experience grief, long days, stress, family responsibilities, nights when your mind won't shut off, and mornings when your body has apparently declared war against consciousness.

I still think the disciples should have stayed awake.

I also understand them more than I used to.

Jesus' words in Matthew 26:41 are interesting: “the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

He knew they wanted to do better.

He also knew they were tired.

There is correction there, but there's an understanding of human weakness too. I need that.

My Phone Is Not Innocent

Some distractions are my own fault.

Let's be fair.

If I put my phone beside me while praying, I'm essentially placing several thousand possible interruptions within arm's reach and then acting surprised when I become distracted.

I used to tell myself I needed it for the Bible app.

Technically true.

Apparently I also needed to know that somebody had replied to a message, what the weather would be at four o'clock, and whether an email that could absolutely wait had arrived.

Now I often leave the phone somewhere else.

Not because phones are evil.

Because I know myself.

That's another part of daily prayer I've had to accept. Sometimes being spiritual means doing something extremely ordinary, like putting an object in another room.

No revelation required.

One Distraction Kept Coming Back

There was a person whose name repeatedly came to mind during prayer for several days.

At first I kept moving past it because I was already praying about other things.

Eventually I thought, fine.

I prayed for him.

Nothing complicated. I didn't know of any crisis happening in his life, so I basically asked God to help him with whatever he was dealing with and to bless his family.

Later I reached out.

He was having a rough time.

I'm cautious about stories like this because Christians can turn them into formulas quickly. Think of somebody during prayer and therefore God must be telling you something.

I don't know that.

Sometimes you think about someone because you saw their name yesterday.

But I'm glad I prayed for him.

I'm also glad I called.

That's enough for me.

I’ve Had Entirely Pointless Thoughts Too

This seems worth admitting.

Not every wandering thought became meaningful.

I've thought about lunch during prayer.

I've remembered something funny somebody said.

I've mentally rewritten conversations that already happened and couldn't possibly benefit from another rewrite.

I've noticed dust.

Once I became unusually interested in a small crack near a window frame.

There was nothing spiritually significant about the crack.

It needed caulking.

Eventually I caulked it.

I don't have a Christian lesson about this.

Maybe Concentration Isn’t The Same Thing As Faithfulness

There are people who concentrate more easily than others.

Some can read for an hour without looking up. Others read three pages and realize they have no idea what happened on page two.

Our minds aren't identical.

Prayer shouldn't become another place where we constantly compare ourselves.

I know believers who can pray aloud beautifully. Their thoughts come out in complete sentences. Scripture seems to arrive in their memory exactly when needed.

Mine occasionally sounds like this:

“Father, help me with... actually, I forgot to tell You about... well, You already know. Anyway...”

Not impressive.

Still prayer.

I don't intentionally try to make it messy. There's no virtue in being scattered.

I've simply stopped believing God is grading the presentation.

There Are Times Discipline Matters

I don't want to excuse laziness either.

If every time I pray I give God ninety seconds before reaching for entertainment, that's probably worth examining.

Attention can be trained.

Habits matter.

There are days when I need to sit still even though I don't feel like sitting still. There are passages of Scripture I need to stay with rather than immediately moving toward something easier.

I know myself well enough to know that “I'm just being authentic” can become a wonderfully religious excuse for avoiding discipline.

So there is some tension here.

I don't have a clever way to remove it.

Sometimes I need grace for distraction.

Sometimes I need to turn the television off.

Figuring out which one is needed on a particular day is part of growing up, I suppose.

I Started Keeping Paper Nearby

This is embarrassingly practical.

I keep a small notebook nearby when I pray.

If I remember something I genuinely need to do, I write two or three words.

Call Mark.

Order filter.

Check appointment.

Done.

My brain apparently believes that once something is on paper, it no longer needs to shout the information at me every forty-five seconds.

This has helped more than several sophisticated approaches I've tried.

The notebook also occasionally ends up containing prayers.

Not beautiful journal entries.

Usually names.

A concern.

A verse reference.

Something I don't want to forget.

There are pages that would make absolutely no sense to anyone else.

That's fine.

Some Mornings Are Just Better Than Others

Yesterday's prayer doesn't predict today's.

That's been true for me for years.

You can have a morning where God feels incredibly near and prayer comes naturally, then sit down the next day in exactly the same place and feel like your thoughts are bouncing off every wall in the room.

I don't know why.

I used to spend too much time trying to recreate the good mornings.

Same chair.

Same Bible.

Same music.

Maybe start with the same Psalm.

It never worked reliably.

God isn't a combination lock.

Relationships change from day to day because people arrive differently from day to day. We're tired one morning, encouraged the next, worried after a phone call, relieved after another one.

I bring whatever version of myself got out of bed.

God already saw him coming.

I Still Get Distracted

This hasn't become a success story.

I haven't discovered five steps for completely focused prayer.

If anything, I've become more aware of how busy my mind is.

But I'm less likely to quit because of it.

When my thoughts wander, I come back.

Then sometimes they wander again.

I come back again.

There are mornings when that happens repeatedly, and I finish without feeling particularly spiritual.

I used to wonder whether those prayers accomplished much.

Now I'm not sure that's the most useful question.

I showed up.

I talked with my Father.

I got distracted.

I came back.

Tomorrow morning I'll probably do some version of it again.

And before then, I really do need to find that screwdriver.

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