ADD and Prayer

Yep, I'm still on the ADD kick.  Bear with me, because I rarely stick with one topic for more than two posts.  If this is boring, try again tomorrow. 

For a struggling Christian, prayer is an important part of this path for life.  It is a path where every single day one has to choose to put God first.  This is difficult with the "world" screaming in our ears at every turn, "Put yourself first."  Hair ads, "You're worth it."  Skin medications that promise a more youthful glow.  Six inch heals -- please tell me what they are supposed to do?  Ankle doctors must love them!!  Vacation ads showing tanned, young people on the beach.  Vitamins, supplements, apple cider vinegar, and it goes on and on.

Well, ADD and prayer don't go along so well together.  With a hunter/gatherer brain, sitting still, being quiet, listening for God's voice, repeating prayers, and contemplating what I cannot see is really difficult.  It usually results in failure, so I've thought, perhaps God wants me to go about praying in a different way.  Thus I take the words of St. James very literally, "Pray always."  As I go about the day, I try to keep God at the center of it.  With my grandchildren, as I drive to and from places, as I listen to the day's news, as I read the prayer requests forwarded to a group of us from Julie Barkey -- I talk to God.  If he has numbered the hair on our heads, if he knows when the sparrow falls, if he fought off every temptation the devil could throw at him, then my efforts are not in vain.  Sometimes I say short prayers throughout the day.

If I have any sort of pain, I immediately offer it up.  If someone I care about is hurting, I hurt too and I offer that up. 

We have to work at trusting God.  It is completely counter-intuitive to this world's thinking to trust in God.  And yet we are in the world daily and we must wage this war.  It brings to mind the St. Michael prayer, doesn't it? 

I have had some very strange encounters in my life, touches from God.  One day as I was leaving work at UA, it was just a sheet of ice on the sidewalk leading to the parking deck.  I was wearing dress shoes and had no traction.  A man was coming the other way towards me and he asked, "Are you going to be all right?"  I answered, "I think so.  I'll just go very slowly."  And then he said something extraordinary, "I'll pray for you."  Wow.

Another time I was walking down that same sidewalk towards Children's Hospital to see my granddaughter who was hospitalized there for her epilepsy.  The sidewalk narrowed at one point to where only one person could pass.  A woman wearing a cloth on her head was coming the other way, and I stepped to the side to allow her access.  As she went by me, she said words to the effect that she would pray for me.

I'll keep trying to do traditional prayer.  Julie Barkey gave me a CD of the rosary with no background music, no distractions, and it does help.  I can usually concentrate on maybe three of the five decades in total.  The Divine Mercy chaplet is also something that I can usually follow.  What I'm saying here is that I've got to try harder!!! 

When we pray, our words aren't just floating up in the air and disappearing.  They are reaching the notice of God.  They are never wasted.
Choose the Lord.  Make Him first.  All other things will follow.