Simplify Your Prayer Life

Natalie Hanemann explores how we can use our unique style and creativity to spend time with God. 

Where were you the last time you prayed? Was it last night before falling asleep? Was it before dinner with your family? Did you recite a memorized prayer or have a conversation? When the prayer ended, did you feel like you’d made a deep connection with Jesus? If not, maybe you’re seeking a new phase of prayer but aren’t sure how to reach it.   

Not a Great Pray-er 

A few years ago, I finally admitted: I was a terrible pray-er. I felt like prayers were just words but didn’t necessarily make me feel any closer to God. I felt closest to Him during Mass, especially during reception of the Eucharist, when consuming His true presence through bread and wine. But was that praying?  

Instead of trying to better understand and experiment with my personal prayer style, I did what others recommended and prayed a Rosary or said a novena. I tried just having a conversation with God, but I wasn’t exactly sure what to talk about and I would get tripped up on selecting the right words. I felt like something must be wrong with me because I did what people around me were doing, and yet, I wasn’t satisfied.   

How We Pray 

Praying is simple.

Notice, I didn’t say easy. But we can complicate it when we’re told we should cover these topics or only approach God if we are in this disposition. The point of praying is to spend time together building a relationship.  

Prayer allows us to be known.

Prayer doesn’t require that we use words. It can simply be letting God gaze at us. Richard Rohr describes it like this:

The essential religious experience is that you are being known through more than knowing anything in particular yourself. (The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, p. 23)

Give God access so He can know and love you entirely.  

Prayer is dynamic.

The ways we pray change as we change — as we age, gain experience, accumulate more love, more loss, more insight. The way we prayed as children probably won’t fulfill us as adults. As Saint Paul wrote:

When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things. (1 Corinthians 13:11) 

Have you invested in finding a way to pray that fits who you are today? 

Prayer is creative.

When we put rules around how best to pray, we stifle the creativity God gave each of us. We all have a style of how we talk and how we dress, and that style extends to the ways we pray.  

The Rules Are ... There Are No Rules 

For so long, when I shut my eyes and tried to feel a connection with the Lord, it seemed as though a steel door stood between us, both of us pressing our palms against the metal trying to make contact with the other. Was there some way to remove this barrier? The veil was ripped when Jesus died on the Cross, but I still felt so far from Him.  

He was the only One capable of untying the tangled-up knots inside me. Failed motherhood moments, dissatisfaction in relationships, self-sabotage, and lots of anger that I couldn’t diffuse. No one but Jesus could fix the broken in me. But I needed time with Him!  

There is no “best” way to pray. Imagine being told how best to tell someone you love them. That puts constraints on our creative expression. It’s the equivalent of giving the same Hallmark card every time we needed to tell our spouse, “I love you.” If we don’t put rules around how to express our love to our spouse, why would we put rules around how we tell God we love Him?  

The key is to identify the prayer practice that most allows us to be honest and vulnerable with God about what’s in our hearts. Having no rules doesn’t mean that guidelines aren’t helpful to get you started. Without suggestions, all this freedom to pray in our own way could result in prayer paralysis. As the Catechism teaches,

Only when we humbly acknowledge that "we do not know how to pray as we ought," are we ready to receive freely the gift of prayer. "Man is a beggar before God.” (CCC 2559) 

How do you feel about your prayer life?

Are you content? Seeking deeper connection? Too busy to think about it? Not sure? 

Ask: 

• Am I satisfied with my prayer life? 
• Am I open to trying something new?  
• What is the state of my interior life? Do I give myself time alone to thinking my thoughts and feeling my feels?  

Take your answers and let them be a conversation starter with God.  

Read more about ways to pray in my article, “Want Intimacy with God? Try Something New.”

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Copyright 2025 Natalie Hanemann
Images: Canva