Building a Habit of Daily Prayer

Do you have trouble starting a conversation with God? Amelia Bentrup shares some ideas to get into the habit of praying daily.

Why is prayer so hard? This is something I have often wondered about. We all know that prayer is talking to God. So why is talking to God so difficult when talking to other people is so easy? Sure, we may find some people are difficult to converse with, but for the most part, we generally don’t have a great deal of difficulty talking to other people.

While we may go days, weeks, or months without prayer, as moms, we likely rarely go more than an hour or two without talking to another person, even if that person does happen to be only two feet tall. We talk to our babies. We talk to our children. We talk to our spouse. We talk to our friends. We talk to the grocery cashier. But oftentimes, we have a difficult time talking to God. Why?

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church,

Prayer is both a gift of grace and a determined response on our part. It always presupposes effort. The great figures of prayer of the Old Covenant before Christ, as well as the Mother of God, the saints, and he himself, all teach us this: prayer is a battle. Against whom? Against ourselves and against the wiles of the tempter who does all he can to turn man away from prayer, away from union with God” (CCC 2725)

Notice how it says that prayer presupposes effort. It is a battle against ourselves and against the tempter. To overwhelmed moms, having one more thing to battle with and about can seem overwhelming. How can we possibly take time to pray when there are babies to be fed and diapers to change and children to school and dishes to be washed and lunches to be made? And laundry, always there is laundry.

Yet prayer gives us the grace and the strength to do battle with the other things in our life. It is essential to being a good mom or wife or worker. It is essential to our relationship with God and growing in our Catholic faith.

So how do we build that habit of prayer?

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Start Your Day with Prayer

No matter how busy we are, we always have time for a quick prayer. Try to get in the habit of praying first thing in the morning, before you even get out of bed. One suggestion I heard and used is to keep a crucifix by your bed and every morning, first thing, grab it and pray an Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be. Or you can start with the Morning Offering. Or just wake up and thank God for allowing you to wake up on another morning.

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What Are You Already Doing?

Think about things you are already doing and then add in prayer during those times. You can pray the Rosary while exercising or driving your kids to school. You can get in some prayer while washing the dishes or folding laundry. Some moms take the time to say a quick prayer as soon as they sit down to feed their baby. The hardest part is remembering to do it: start by slowly building the habit of chaining prayer with another activity you already are doing. Every time you wash the dishes, you say a prayer. Every time you fold laundry, pray for the owner of that article of clothing. As many times as you can remember throughout the day, turn your thoughts towards God.

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Plan a Family Prayer Time

Despite busy schedules, planning a time to pray together as a family daily is so important. Every evening in our house, all family members who are home gather together for family prayer. We do a Scripture reading or reflection or listen to a saint’s story and then Evening Prayer from the Liturgy of Hours. And I will admit, there are many times that our family prayer time happens in the car while driving home from an activity, but we try to make it a priority.

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Prayer gives us the grace and the strength to do battle with the other things in our life. #CatholicMom

Start your prayer by asking the Holy Spirit to guide you and help you to pray well. Then just try to focus. Every time you notice yourself getting distracted or thinking about something else, try to pull yourself back to God. And remember, imperfect prayer, distracted prayer, and interrupted prayer is better than no prayer at all. For moms, the one guarantee we have in life is that, at times, our prayer will be interrupted. That is okay. It is still worth the effort to pull out our rosaries and Bibles and prayer books and prepare for the battle.

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