Dealing with Distractions During Prayer

Margaret Rash shares her personal struggles with distractions during prayer and offers a tip on one way to handle them. 

Have you ever started a text message to a friend or family member and about halfway through typing out a lengthy message, you realize the message you're sending is either irrelevant, off topic, or in some other way inappropriate to the conversation?    

You type out a question you realize you're not supposed to be asking for one reason or another, or a joke to your sister but then remember she won't think this particular text is as hilarious as you do — at any rate, you find yourself quickly backspacing and deleting everything you just typed out to replace it with something more germane to the conversation. 

Sometimes this is how I pray 

I start my Rosary and halfway through a “Hail Mary” I'm thinking about when I need to start dinner (backspace, backspace, back to the First Joyful Mystery).  

I begin meditating on a Scripture passage and end up wondering how the book I was reading last night is going to end (delete, delete, I'm back to Romans 5:8 now).    

I pick up my Sacred Heart chaplet beads and then mentally plan my homeschool schedule for the next morning. It's not intentional; our human minds just have a propensity to wander. We all struggle from time to time.  

This can be very frustrating, especially when we really intend to focus and we genuinely want to converse with God. I am sometimes tempted to become upset with myself when I find I am so completely distracted during my prayer time and saddened that I cannot seem to do better. 

But this is how I handle it now 

I can't be totally rid of all distractions during prayer time. I've come to face this. I've tried different tips and tricks and ways to focus, but my mind continues to wander when I do not want it to.   

But what I can change is my attitude toward these distractions.  

Saint Francis de Sales taught that if we are distracted during our prayers, we should simply bring our hearts and minds back to Jesus, gently and simply. What I've come to realize is that my frustrations during prayer time were coming from a place of pride and self-reliance. I was frustrated because I couldn't force myself to meditate the way I wanted to or “white knuckle” my way through prayer time. I couldn't pray as fervently and devoutly as I thought I should be able to, which made me disappointed in myself.  

If we spend too much time irritated by our distractions, we are feeding the distraction itself, spending more time than we should thinking about the thing that distracted us to begin with.  

Now when I find my mind wandering to the next thing when I should be praying, I gently bring it back to where it needs to be. I don't let it frustrate me or deter me from prayer. I keep Saint Francis de Sales’ advice in mind and just bring my heart back with little fanfare and much humility.  

Saint Francis de Sales, pray for us. 

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Copyright 2025 Margaret Rash
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