Procrastinators Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from chronic procrastination.

Fitting in Prayer Time

Hi.  I'm transferring a discussion over from the chatbox (is this ok with you clement?  if not I'll edit to make it anonymous):

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Heather B ... when I don't put prayer first, early in the day, my day become self-will run riot.  Which SO doesn't work.

Heather B It's my perfectionism that gets in the way.  I think I need to have complete quiet and solitude and a chunk of time to have any kind of quality
prayer.

clement me 2

Heather B But my kids have been getting up way early, so it doesn't happen.
Heather B I'd like to find others with kids to see how they fit prayer into their day.
clement mine are in school
Heather B How old are they clement?  Don't you still have a morning rush?
clement o yes!
Heather B Mine are almost 6 and 3, and I'm homeschooling, so I need to be a little creative.
clement 11-13 now
clement u need a lot of prayr lol
Heather B You got that right!
Heather B Anyways - don't want to derail others - maybe later I'll start a forum post to discuss further.
clement so... homeschooling... do they have reading time?
clement ok good point, i do have HP-given responsibilities
clement i'll just say that it seems v gd to me to say to kids, "mommy needs her prayer time now"
clement or daddy, for that matter :)
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Step 11 is "Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out." Give this, it follows that finding time for regular quality prayer is critical to my recovery/sobriety.  If I don't know what God's will is for how I spend my time, I am bound to be frustrated.  My best efforts at trying to figure this out for myself led me to the state I am in today - something about the way my mind works is broken, different from normal folks.  I absolutely need this daily contact with God in order to get clear about and turn over my resentments, fears, false beliefs, etc.  I'm very clear on this.
However - I want it the way I want it!  I want a 20 minute or so chunk of time first thing in the morning, before the kids get up, serene and quiet (and throw in a beautiful environment too - i.e. an uncluttered room).  And it's not happening.  The kids get up way too early.  My living room is usually still in disarray from the day before.  I get interrupted or distracted, and before I know it the morning and part of the afternoon have flown by and I'm feeling crabby, less than serene, often with a guilty feeling that I haven't spent my time wisely.  You get the picture.
If you care to share, I'd love to hear how others fit regular prayer and meditation into their lives.  I do have ideas of things I could do differently, but it still helps to hear how others are doing it.  Thanks!

ikhyf heatherB!

I can TOTALLY relate to everything you said! I only have one - a 3 yo daughter, but she is only in school 5-6 hours a day and our morning rush is pretty rushed! Its only been the last 6 mos that shes been at a school and even now I am it, no babysitters or dad helping at moment - so that quiet, peaceful, serene, uncluttered time - doesn't really exist for me often!

My day doesn't go well if I don't start with prayer of some kind - I wish I could say that my prayer time was super spiritual and removed from daily life off in a special prayer room - but instead it is while I am making lunches and finding that other sock and trying to get the applesauce off her pants so I don't have to change them again!

 This just occured to me, but it wasn't until I started recognizing from the tools here about the pattern of avoiding something until we have the perfect time that I noticed how bad i do that with most things. As I started to lookfor pockets of time to accomplish things a little at a time instead of waiting for the long, uninterrupted perfect time (that never comes)  I noticed I had more time thanI realized. It has translated into my prayer and study life. Just in the past few weeks I have used even 2-5 min here and there until now it is just part of my day all day - a place I am so grateful to God to be back to!(I also strengthen myself with music and teachingsin the background when possible all day and it gets me thru the times when its all thomas the train and veggie tales and bubbles and playing games!)

I also pray with my daughter a lot - its just us, so not much time to escape off by myself, so I just let her hear and see me at those moments, and she joins in andI see it make a difference in her little life too! The other day she was playing with her trains and said, "oh no he's stuck in the mud, thank you Jesus for helping her get out!" (we r working on pronons still!)  It was so wonderful to see.

So glad you are here and seeking answers like the rest of us - this fellowship here has been aGod-Send for me and he uses it daily to teach and strengthen me and keep me accountable and encouraged! Thanks for starting this post - looking forward to ideas too! :-)

Love this one....  Romans 8:26-28 message translation  “Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our condition, and keeps us present before God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.”