I grew up Catholic, so prayer was the sign of the cross and one of many prayers that were taught to me through my catechism classes. I never deviated from what I was taught. In fact, I couldn’t tell you how to pray if my life depended upon it. The unfortunate problem with that is that it wasn’t just my life that depended on prayer, but my soul as well. It wasn’t until I married my husband and walked away from my Catholic roots that I learned God wanted more than the muttering of words that I was taught when I was seven. God wanted a relationship with me, and to be fair, it’s impossible to have any sort of relationship without conversation. My first attempts at prayer were clumsy because I did not have a templet, other than the Lord’s Prayer, I did not know if there was an order or what God wanted to hear. I fumbled and babbled to God, mostly feeling like I was failing with my words and wondering if He could even answer prayers if there wasn’t an order to them. After a period of time of muddling through what felt like absolute chaos in prayer, I asked my husband and mother in love (mother in law is not the word I use, as you may recall from earlier posts) what should be included in my conversations with God. I was given three elements; praise, confession, and petition. Sounds pretty simple, right? We praise God for who he is and what he has done for us, we confess our sins and ask for forgiveness, and then we ask Him for our needs. A conversation can come from that fairly easily. As my prayer life developed, I found this not only becoming second nature, but I found that I had a lot to praise God for in my life. It’s funny how we can place things in perspective when we look for how to praise God. For example, it’s a dreary rainy day, but with that rain comes blooming flowers. It can be cold and snowy, well, that means my family gets to drink hot chocolate and watch movies together. Is it a hot, sunny day? Who wants to go swimming! The opportunities for praise become endless when we look for them. As for confession and forgiveness, I went from feeling shame each time I prayed to feeling grateful for being covered with grace despite doing nothing to earn it. It is so humbling to approach the throne of God at any time of day and admit that I made a mistake. The knowledge that God will forgive a repentant heart is so beautiful and encourages me to look at my children in the same way. It gives me the desire to give grace to others when they hurt me because I am given grace by God. Petitioning God for my wants or needs might be the most complicated part of prayer for me. I have a difficult time not being in control and laying petitions at the feet of God without picking the problem back up again. The hardest part of faith for me is relinquishing control to God. Believe me, I receive many opportunities, and I fail more often than not. But God hasn’t given up on me, and He will not give up on you. As we move through our prayer journey, there is always so much to learn about who we are in God and his desires for us. I pray that you will benefit from what I have learned about prayer and that you will find ways to grow in God.