Back in the saddle?

I was hoping to be a little more regular in my meditations this year, but I have bigger priorities to deal with.  As I’ve stated repeatedly since Ash Wednesday, my Lent was less than desirable in what I hoped to sacrifice and give back to our Lord.  Not only that, but my prayer life has been in a real “funk”—you could say I’ve been going through a “dry” spell in my daily devotions.  Oh, I say my prayers alright, but I’ve felt like I’m just “going through the motions”.   I’m use to enjoying my private prayer moments, but they’ve been tedious for a couple of months now.  I know prayer is not about “me”—it’s about loving and praising my Creator and Savior yet I feel like I’m disappointing Him by not giving Him my full attention during prayer.

 

My dilemma has been how to get that motivation to pray back in full-swing.  I asked for God’s help, but I wasn’t seeing it because loving God that He is, my life is still blessed.   I have a great family, many good friends, and relatively good health for a guy who doesn’t eat well or exercise properly.  I had an offer for promotion yesterday that I turned down primarily because it would mean more work (for not that much more in salary) and less time to spend in prayer and with my family.

Then a couple of mornings ago a co-worker came to me for advice.  She said she just didn’t feel much like coming to work lately because it hasn’t been as fun as usual for her.  (Yes, I said fun.  What good is work if you can’t enjoy it?)  It had become routine and boring.  Some of the tasks she usually had “fun” doing seemed like “work”.   I told her that I hadn’t noticed because she was still maintaining her high level of productivity. Then I asked her how she was able to get the job done when she “didn’t feel like it”.  It boiled down to a very simple explanation.  She HAD to!  It is what she is SUPPOSED to do!  My advice to her was to continue to do the few tasks that HAD to be done, but then to find a new, fun project to work on that would help her get back in the swing of things.  I suggested we have a contest to create a little fun competition to increase productivity and morale that would require us to do those things she was finding mundane.  She thought that was a great idea.  By the afternoon, she was so excited about the contest that the friendly jousting between us (we had elected ourselves “team leaders”) had us both crying with laughter!

I had an epiphany!  I would start throwing words around like “epiphany” to get my mind back to religious matters!  Just kidding….  Actually, I did think of a plan to use something I find enjoyable to direct my thoughts into a more prayerful mood.  What better way than to re-design my blog page?

 

You’ll notice I cleaned up a lot of the clutter on the right side of the page.  I organized it as well by content—prayer, family, self, and nonsense.  I also got a little creative and designed a new “logo” for the header.  I hope you like it.  More importantly, I think I may be on my way out of my spiritual funk—While looking for new graphics and creating a few, I re-visited some of my favorite online meditative sources and found myself in a pretty deep contemplation through prayer tonight.

 

I guess Jesus was noticing the struggle I was having and sent His spirit to me in the guise of my co-worker and her dilemma to help me recognize a way out!  I won’t say I’m completely running on all cylinders prayer-wise, but—like the punch line of the old joke that asks “What do you call a group of 1000 lawyers tied together at the bottom of the ocean?”—It’s a “good start”.  (Sincere apologies to my attorney daughter).