Friday, March 6, 2015

#11: A Person a Day

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about." - Wendy Mass

It's true, right?  No matter how similar your situation may be to mine, my experience and yours are totally different.  It's easy to fall into the pattern of offering advice to every person you meet, or to feel like you should be coping better with *insert situation* because so-and-so experienced the same struggle and is doing so much better than you are.  False.

"...everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about."  Let that sink in for a minute.


The first (and one might argue, most important) way to be a better friend/spouse/employee/sibling/child is to pray - pray hard, and pray often.  For a while I have wanted to be more intentional - more specific - with my prayers.  The only idea I had on how to get better at doing that was to designate a person/group of people/specific need in prayer each day.  And to hold myself accountable, I wanted to sit down with a calendar and write something down for each day of the year.

Anyone want to guess how that worked out?  Yeah...2014 came and went and it never happened.

Cue Lent 2015 when Rosie shared her paper chain concept.  Aha - that's it!  What the perfect way and time to implement this goal I planned over a year ago.

It took us a few days (after Ash Wednesday) to sit down and write down our intentions, then assemble the chain, but we did it!  And sometimes we have to double up (re: my husband travels a lot for work) on reading the strips, but it's working and I love it.  Our prayers are so much more intentional (read: mature) than they were before and I really hope we can find a way to continue the concept long after the Lenten season ends.


Excuse the cat food and catnip-filled sock.
I'd certainly be interested in hearing how others keep the habit of making specific, intentional prayers happen in their lives.  Let me know if you have any ideas, tips, or suggestions!

-Lauren

3 comments:

Jen said...

Oh my goodness, I loooove this! Pretty decorations, intentional prayers, a reminder that it is Lent…really, so good. And you are SO RIGHT about everyone struggling with something and everyone's experience is different!

Unknown said...

I love the paper chain idea! I may have to borrow this idea too :)

Unknown said...

I had that same realization not too long ago, and even just keeping the specific intentions present in my mind and saying them specifically in prayer makes such a big difference. I have a pretty good memory, but I started by writing them down, even keeping a post it by my keyboard so when I read blogs and they say "pray for my dad, my friend, this child etc" I jot down the first name or whatever will remind me of the situation and then take that post it note to prayer.