I took a walk this morning, my first since getting over Covid. It was brutally cold, but I couldn’t resist layering on some warm clothes to take a stroll through my neighborhood. Being cooped up for the last several weeks, I’d forgotten how much I enjoy the quiet of a morning walk. While shivering through my normal morning route, I automatically opened the Voxer app on my phone and caught up on messages, followed by Marco Polo, and then some music before switching to a podcast. All good things, but goodness, that’s a lot of input for a forty-minute walk.
Here lately, prayer has been a struggle. It’s not that prayer is always hard, but sometimes I feel like my mind is following a hundred different strands of thought during the only quiet, focused moments of my day. When I’m sitting cross-legged on the couch with a coffee cup in my hand while watching the sun rise through the living room windows, it’s truly quiet in my home. It’s the reason I get up earlier than everyone—to be alone with the Lord without distraction. And yet, nothing is as distracting to me as my own cluttered mind.
I remember sitting just like that a few years ago, cross-legged on the couch with my Bible and coffee, trying to pray and wondering why every random thought I could conjure came up during prayer time and prayer time only: my grocery list, the day’s schedule, whether or not I’d switched the laundry over, if my first-grade teacher is still living, why my peace lily plant blooms in the winter sometimes, if I wanted to cook chicken or beef for dinner…and on it goes. A loop of distractions I couldn’t seem to turn off. Why can’t I think these thoughts at other times of the day? Why now when I’m trying to pray? I wondered. I thought through my daily habits, my routines, my times for simply thinking. But I realized that those “just thinking” times didn’t exist. I didn’t give myself any time during the day to simply think. And since I didn’t give my brain any other chance to loop through its random wanderings, it happened when I would get still and quiet to pray. When I thought about all the time in my day when my brain could travel its routes of rumination, I realized that I didn’t allow it because I never stopped giving my brain input. Music, podcasts, books and audiobooks, Voxer messages, social media scrolling, even cooking shows on my iPad while I made dinner. There was so much input and so little negative white space in my mind. The lack of margin during the regular parts of my day inhibited my brain from being quiet when I sat to pray, thus making the practice of silence for prayer feel nearly impossible.
My solution when I first had this realization was to incorporate more mental white space into my day. And you know what? It worked. Recently, I’ve had to refresh this practice because, well, there have been a lot of podcasts and novels and cooking shows thanks to three weeks of quarantine as illness worked its way through our household. I’ve realized anew that when my mind is habitually too busy to talk to my Lord, I need to give my brain other times of the day to wander. Prayer time, then, is for prayer.
So, what does that look like? It looks like choosing not to listen to a podcast while putting on my makeup and fixing my hair in the mornings. Instead, I just think. It means standing in line at the pharmacy and not scrolling on my phone. Instead, I observe the people around me and just think. It means taking a walk and occasionally not taking my earbuds with me, as horrifying as that might seem. Instead, I think about my neighbors or the weather or what I’m doing today or why I couldn’t sleep last night. It means sitting in the coffee shop without opening a book. Instead, I just sit there. Drinking my coffee and people watching and thinking.
But here’s what happened when I began to give myself mental white space to think during the day: not only did my prayer time become less mentally frenetic, my “thinking” times during the day often morphed into prayer times of their own. Standing in line at Walgreens, I observed the people in line around me as well as the harried pharmacists who are severely understaffed right now, and I prayed for them without thinking about it. Sitting in the coffee shop, I prayed for the barista who likes to talk to me about her pet rabbit. Taking a walk through my neighborhood in silence gave me a chance to pray for my neighbors and to pray through my upcoming day.
There are many other tips and tools for decluttering your mind in prayer, but nothing has helped me like cutting down on input. Music, podcasts, shows, books, Voxer messags with my friends—these are all things I enjoy! It’s not sinful to listen to podcasts or read books or catch up with friends on messaging apps. I’d argue those are good things. But, do I need a regular stream in my ears or before my eyes during every spare moment of my day? No. Not if I begin to see the negative impact on my spiritual life.
Recently, I heard someone say (on a podcast, ironically) that we should do every physical thing spiritually and every spiritual thing physically[1], essentially holding on to Coram deo—the idea that we do everything before the face of God. There is no delineation between sacred and secular for Christians. Our whole lives are spiritual acts of worship. So, even something as menial as leaving your earbuds at home can have a profound impact on your relationship with Christ if you let it. I’ve noticed over the last couple of weeks that as I’ve given my mind some roads to roam throughout the day, prayer has become a more natural response during those times and a more focused activity in the quiet of my mornings on the couch watching the sun rise. Do I still get distracted sometimes? Sure. But, it is easier to reign in those random thoughts and to remember I’m enjoying the blessing of a conversation with my Maker.
The lack of margin during the regular parts of my day inhibited my brain from being quiet when I sat to pray, thus making the practice of silence for prayer feel nearly impossible. Share on X“If then you have been raised with Christ, set your mind on things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Colossians 3:1-3
Photo by Kate Williams on Unsplash
[1] I think it was David Murray who said this on the Crossway podcast, “A Realistic Approach to New Year’s Resolutions,” which can be found here.
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and lives in rural Southeast Missouri where she tries and fails to keep up with her two energetic sons. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence (P&R) and Everyday Faithfulness (Crossway), and Memorizing Scripture (Moody). Connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
[…] Glenna Marshall wrote about the fight for silence in her latest post, “Prayer and Mental Margin”. […]