By Bo Sanchez

How to pray when you’re not a priest or nun but a regular office employee who rides the Tamara FX to work for two hours, raises three kids who need help in their homework and does the family’s laundry during weekends.

Do What Works

There is no one way of praying. Continue to search for the way of prayer that enriches you, that blesses you, that allows God to speak to you more or work in your life more. You’ll know. Because I’m a writer, I pray by writing in my journal. And that blesses me immensely. I get up from my prayer time refreshed, restored, and energized! If you were to tell me that this isn’t the proper way of praying and that I should kneel down and be quite for thirty minutes, I’d tell you to ask Him why do I feel more blessed with my improper way of praying and feel totally bored and tired with so-called ‘proper’ way. Does He like to torture me and make my time with Him totally unenjoyable?

I don’t believe there is a proper way, as I said, there are days when my prayer means I’m in front of my computer writing my journal. There are days when I get my guitar and pluck a tune. There are days when I just sit before the Blessed Sacrament and gaze at Him.  There are days when I do kneel down and worship Hi, in silence! After some years, you’ll develop a set pattern, and that is great. Just ask yourself what works and blesses you more. But this principle must be balanced off by another principle essential to good relationships.

Do What’s Right

Sometimes, something doesn’t work but you know it’s the right thing to do. So do it and you’ll find out in the long-term that it will work!

Let me give you an example. While driving on the road one day, I began to pray with this urge to thank God for all the blessings in my life. I knew it was the right thing to do. So I rattled off a long list of blessings that I was thankful for: friends, work, health. I began to mention each friend, each piece of productive work, and every physical movement I could do! But you know what? At that particular time, if given a choice, my prayer wouldn’t be thanksgiving but supplication because that’s what I usually do while driving. I intercede for people. But because I did what I believed was right my heart begun to catch on, to dance with its beat. After awhile, I loved thanking the Lord. It filled my heart with so much joy with so much joy and gladness. I felt more blessed then ever. (It worked!) Today, it’s a major staple in my prayer-while-driving practice.

Be You

Because prayer is a relationship and not just a ritual, it’s important that you face God as you are. Share to Him your deepest emotions. Don’t just rattle off songs, ‘nice’ and ‘proper’ prayers without disclosing how you feel at that particular moment, and what you’re going through.

If your do just the ‘proper’ things with your husband (For example, cook for him, serve him, make love once a week,) without sharing your inner world to him as a best friend would to another best friend, your marriage is in grave danger.

Same thing with God. Your relationships with Him must be totally honest. And intimate.

Tell Him everything, at the end of prayer time, I feel a sense of connection and bondedness with God because I’ve just shared to Him either my excitement, my sorrow, my hurt, or my happiness. He knows what I’m going through, and I see Him actually sharing my excitement, my sorrow, my hurt, or my happiness with me.

Enjoy it

I believe that prayer should be fun. Really enjoyable. If it isn’t, do something about it. I don’t believe God wants you to suffer needlessly.

I’m grateful to God for giving me friends who have successful and strong marriages. They tell me how they enjoy their weekly communication time together. Sure, there are days when the husband feels lousy and would rather watch TV, or the wife would rather talk to her girlfriends about the latest shopping hit in town rather than talk to one another. But they tell me that as they remain committed to deeply sharing with each other their lives in their weekly dialogues, they end up enjoying it immensely.

There are days when their dialogues are very exciting. There are days when it’s more mellow and relaxing. There are some days when they just have to plow through it and be committed to talk even if you don’t feel like doing it. Prayer is like that. There are highs and there are lows in your prayer graph.

But I believe that your more common experience should be one of enjoying your time with God. “In your presence, there is fullness of joys, and at your right hand, there are pleasures even more.” (Psalm 16:11)

Closing Words

My relationship with God is the most important relationship in my life. It takes top priority. Because of this, I schedule short time of prayer each day and unless emergencies crop up, I usually am able to keep my time with the Lord

It doesn’t have to be long. Sometimes, I’m able to spend only fifteen minutes with Him. At other times, when time permits, I stay longer even reaching an hour.

But do you see now what I mean by relationship and not ritual?

It doesn’t bother if I have a short prayer time because throughout the day, I commune with Him. And He communes with me.

It’s not how long, what posture, what pattern and even how you perfectly keep your prayer time each day without missing one or else.

In the end, it’s about love. Not about laws about prayer.

In the end, it’s about you and God. And how intimate both of you are.

Believe me. There’s nothing quite like it in this world.

Salamat sa Kerygma. Available at most shopping centers