Does your mind wander when you’re praying? Do you close your eyes, ready to talk to God and instead of spiritual peace, you find yourself thinking about the cute cat photo you saw on Facebook, the check you need to deposit, the noisy muffler on the car outside, the milk you forgot to buy at the grocery store? Does your prayer time become an open market for a thousand and one interruptions?
Sure it does. Happens to the best of us. My brain goes hither and yon during prayer. It’s like a dog that jumped a fence and has a mind to wander all over the neighborhood, poking into everybody else’s yard. Here are some pointers for when your mind wanders in prayer.
1) Go where your mind goes.
Don’t fight it. Hear the thought. Notice it. If I fight a thought when I’m trying to pray, it only gets bigger and simply more distracting. Better to acknowledge it. Some days my thoughts are noisier than others, my head a chatterbox. All the more reason I should be giving myself this quiet one-on-one time with God, because here’s my chance to do something with those thoughts…
2) Give the thought back to God.
Turn it into a prayer. “Thanks, God, for Facebook and the cute photos our friends post. Lord, keep an eye on our finances and the checks that we deposit–you know our needs. Forgive me for complaining about my neighbor’s noisy car. May it get her to and from her work. ” Maybe the distraction is something you needed to pray about.
3) Throw an anchor to windward.
Have a sacred phrase to keep pulling you back to prayer. It can just be one word–Abba, Father, Lord, Jesus, Christ, Divine Master–to remind you just Who you’re addressing or a sentence from the Lord’s prayer or the Jesus prayer, “Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me.” Each “Abba” or “Father” pulls you back to the work of giving yourself over to God.
4) Write the prayers down.
Keep a prayer journal. Pray on a page. The people I know who do this regularly say that writing down prayers by hand is better than typing them. It’s more tactile. My handwriting is so bad that I can’t imagine God being able to read any of my scrawl, but then, doesn’t God know what my thoughts are anyway? Which leads me to the last point:
5) The intention is what counts.
God knows what you want to say better than you know yourself. As Paul said, “We don’t know what we should pray, but the Spirit itself pleads our case…” (Romans 8:26). That you have given yourself a set time of prayer, that you yearn to be in God’s presence, that you have needs only God can fill, that’s what matters. The thoughts will come and go, the distractions wax or wane, but your desires will be heard.
