One of the most popular times for personal prayer is first thing in the morning. However, adding daily morning prayer to your routine when you haven’t developed the habit yet can be a challenge.
Here is how I did it:
My Morning Routine (without Prayer)
Before adding prayer to my morning routine, this is what it looked like:
1. Wake up, 5:00am.
2. Start up the computer at my desk.
3. Start the coffee.
4. Begin reading, writing, coding, or watching lectures on the computer.
5. Get my daughter out of bed for breakfast when she wakes up.
This has actually been a fairly new routine. Lately I have needed to use the mornings to do work on my MA and various websites. So adding prayer wasn’t as difficult as it might have been normally. Plus, this time is already set aside as personal time so I don’t feel bad about praying alone.
My Daily Morning Prayer Routine
Here is what my typical weekday morning looks like now:
1. Wake up, 5:00am.
2. Start the coffee.
3. Pray
4. Start up the computer at my desk (unless it is used for prayer)
5. Begin reading, writing, coding, or watching lectures on the computer.
6. Get my daughter out of bed for breakfast when she wakes up.
Challenges to Adding Morning Prayer
1. I felt unproductive. Since the morning is my the most productive hour and a half of my day, I had a hard time focusing on prayer rather than the things I wanted to accomplish. Many type-A people struggle with prayer because it is inherently “unproductive” in the busy world we live in today.
“[Some people] overly prize production and profit; thus prayer, being unproductive, is useless.” (CCC, 2727)
2. What should I pray? I’ve been dabbling with various prayer books and prayer apps in the morning, but I haven’t zeroed in on a particular devotion or prayer type. I would like to get to the point where I look forward to prayer like I look forward to picking up a good book again. How that the habit of praying is set, I’m looking forward to building habits within prayer.
3. Distractions. I pray at my desk, which can be a distraction. The desk just happens to be in the same area that we have most of our prayer reminders. Thus, it can be easy to get distracted especially if the computer is open and ready to go. It may be that I will need to find a better place to pray.
(photo credit: D’Arcy Norman)
