The Struggle with Prayer Pt. 3: Time

This has been a hard week. Thanksgiving Day my grandfather in-law died, so we are preparing to go to his funeral. On top of that I have two new groups at church starting soon, my normal church duties, my master’s class picking up speed, and general life insanity. It feels like my entire world has picked up speed and the world is spinning just that much faster than normal. Maybe you’ve had times like that too. It’s harder to concentrate, and there’s just so much on your plate that sitting down to do anything for an extended period of time is hard, and praying for a while at a time just seems impossible.

At times like this I usually end up praying for about two minutes and thinking it is an hour. My mind is just racing so fast and I feel so rushed that I run out of things to pray about almost immediately. I almost immediately feel like I hit a dead end in my prayers and then stop. But just like I don’t really get to sharing deep things with my wife for the first half an hour or so of a normal conversation, it takes time to get to truly talking deeply with God. And that’s time which right now I just can’t sit still long enough to give if I try and pray.

Fortunately, this is a common problem. The Roman Catholic Church has for centuries recognized that people need structure to help them concentrate in prayer, and so they use a rosary when they pray. The feel of the beads sliding through your hands as you pray gives you a feeling of progress, while also keeping your mind more focused and helping you to recognize that you haven’t been praying for an hour, it’s been three beads.

If you don’t have a rosary, almost anything will work that is something you can hold and has increments. Some people finger their necklaces, others more small pebbles down a pre-marked path with each prayer. Still other people make what they call “prayer shawls” or something similar where with each stitch you make you say a prayer. The ever increasing shawl gives you a sense of progress with your prayers, and also keeps you focused because with each stitch you seek to find someone or something else to pray over. This helps you from just dealing with the standard stuff you always pray about and actually move into the realm of needs around you and people you normally wouldn’t think to pray for.

I don’t knit or crochet, so this method doesn’t work too well for me. However, I do make chain maille armour. And so I have modified the prayer shawl method for chain maille. With each link that I put in, I say a prayer. This helps me to stay focused on prayer and not just run off when I run out of things to say. It also gives me something physical to hold and do with my hands so I am not as fidgety. Using the sense of touch in prayer has really helped me personally, and helped me to move beyond surface level greetings and into prayer that is about what really matters to me and those around me.

In short, if you have trouble concentrating in prayer, or sticking with it for a significant amount of time, or just fidget a lot, try some form of tactile prayer. It can be a rope, a necklace, a rosary, even a stick with notches on it. If you can, making something as you pray can be even more significant. Whittle, knit, carve, build (Lego’s work great, actually) or anything else you can do to help concentrate on God and keep your hands busy. It might sound weird, but give it a try, you might be surprised at how it helps your prayer life.