Distracted Prayers....

  I do a lot of praying in my car.  It's one of the few quiet places in my life where I know I will spending a lot of time and where I won't be interrupted.  So... usually I get in my car, leave the radio off or lowly play some worship music and then spend most of my drives centering myself on God.  And it is glorious...just what I need!  This morning however.... my prayer drive was....RIDICULOUS...although it didn't start out that way! 
  I got in my car as usual and has I began to drive, opened up with my normal "Dear God please protect me in this car as we both know how "wonderful" my  driving skills are", and then proceeded to go thru my normal list of thanks, praise, confessions, and requests (although never said in that order or one by one...in fact it's usually a mixed up mumbled mess of words that cascade out of my heart all at once).

  Before I even got to the highway...which mind you is within 5 minutes of my house...I realized I was no longer praying but rather singing Maroon 5's "One More Night" out loud.  How does that happen?!?!  How can I get so distracted from praying that I don't even realize I've moved on to doing something else when I'm suppose to be in the midst of prayer?!!

  Anyway, once I realized that God's not exactly "Stuck on my body like a tattoo", I moved back into praying and tried to really concentrate on what I was saying.  But once again I found myself lost in thought and not in prayer....and basically  using my prayer time to think about my day and where I would fit the few errands I need to do, into the short breaks I have between activities today. Not exactly Godly in that... my life and schedule should fit into His mission for the world and not the other way around! 

   Well, by the time I caught myself this time I was already at my first stop and put my "prayer" on hold until I dropped off my young companion whom I take to preschool.   The original plan was to pray in my head while driving with him (since I usually just pray out loud in my car), but the second  we got into the car we started talking about the storm we had last night and how cool it would be to have the power to control lighting...and well I never got back to that plan.

  I guess I should have picked up my prayers after dropping him off but honestly, once again I was distracted by the thought of how it would look if my interactions with my friends went like this morning prayer time was going!  I thought about how annoyed people would be with me if I started off sharing the story of my day with them, only to stop midway and break out into some top 100 radio hit that's completely unrelated.  Or how self-centered they might feel I am for interrupting their sharing with a list of all the things I need to do in my day that didn't include them!

  You'd think this would drive me immediately back to prayer.  That I would see how frustrating it might be for God never mind another person to have me so distracted  in my time with Him....but it didn't.  In fact I actually had to write all this down before I could push it out of my head enough to really concentrate on my prayers.

   The thing about praying is that some times it becomes so nonchalant for me that I forget I'm coming before a HOLY God.  It's like in trying to maintain my relationship with God, I make prayer so "normal" that I forget what it took for me to have the privilege to speak to God myself and not go through a priest. 

  I don't think prayers are suppose to be "stiff"...I don't think they are suppose to be structured and said in some sort of specific order, or otherwise they are not valid.  In fact I think prayer really is just talking to God. However, I never want to forget the implications of what that means...that I'm talking to GOD...and I never want treat my time with Him like it's of no value. 

   So this morning I repented...and I went back to my car and spent that time with God...thanking Him, Praise him, Confessing and laying my requests at His feet....and basically taking the time to make Him the center of my life.  And...once again....it was just what I needed!