When Do You Find Time to Pray? by Katie Kimball

Last time I shared with you my constant novena trick to keep myself praying with the fervor of the 40 days of Lent. Today let’s talk about when during the day you can set aside time to talk to the Lord.

If you don’t think you can fit prayer into your schedule, try 5 minutes. Choose morning, evening, or any particular time of day and commit to setting the timer for FIVE minutes (so you don’t interrupt your prayer to check the clock) and pray. If you’re like me, having a plan will help so that you don’t spend the first four minutes of your 5-minute prayer thinking about what want to pray about, or the last four minutes pondering your to-do list for the rest of the day.

Choose some written prayers to pray every day if you don’t think you can focus well.
Have a prayer list of intentions handy, those people you want to pray for, so that you keep on task.
Try the recurring novena method that I described in my last column.

As a mother of young children, a specific time of day for prayer doesn’t work for me. I would never say, "Every day at 3:00 I’ll pray for 5 minutes." Who KNOWS what I might be doing at 3:00?

I have to choose a specific point in my routine. For example, when I had one child, I used to pray daily when my son went down for his nap, setting aside the first five minutes for the Lord.

If you have kids in school, a "time" of day might work for you. Try about 10 minutes before the kids come home. Then you can pray for 5 minutes and prepare for their coming for the next 5.

Some other ideas include:

upon waking up
after brushing your teeth
first thing after the child(ren) go down for a nap (BEFORE you get involved in doing your to-do list – it’s too long anyway!)
right after dinner
after dishes are done
after the kid(s) go down at night
when you get home from work…
The list is endless and must be tailored to YOUR situation.

"And what about when you had your second child, Katie?" you might ask. I’ll tell you about that in part three: When Your Routine is Interrupted.