Prayer... Feeling a Little Lost Recently

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CuriousMike

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I honestly don’t know what I’ve managed to do recently.

So often, I’ve been able to pray, and feel really ‘refreshed,’ calm, content and just happy about stuff after finishing. God has helped me greatly from my time in prayer, and I am thankful for it.

Recently, I’ve started trying to pray the Divine Office, and bring it into my daily rhythm and encourage spirituality, along with my daily recitation of the Rosary.
Hoping to make prayers for others, and move deeper into prayer life, I found out about the Confraternity of the Rosary, and decided to join it.

During the the last week or so, more and more often, prayer is becoming difficult. As I pray the Rosary, in particular, my mind completely looses its pathway. Usually, my focus is on what each mystery means to me (based on the image and text excerpt).
To add to this, over the course of the complete Rosary, my feelings grow in anger and even small things seem to annoy me. It makes me hot and flustered, and want to stop praying.

The same problem seems to arise even when I try to read spiritual texts, as I was asked to as part of my last confession.

My greatest problem is as I fall over, and loose ground in prayer, I become weaker still and often fall into sin. My prayer usually comes back in this time, strengthened… :confused:

I feel completely lost and annoyed at the moment. It isn’t something that is God’s fault, I know. Perhaps I am too self-centered in prayer?

What are the suggestions from the CAF members?
 
CuriousMike said:
I honestly don’t know what I’ve managed to do recently.

So often, I’ve been able to pray, and feel really ‘refreshed,’ calm, content and just happy about stuff after finishing. God has helped me greatly from my time in prayer, and I am thankful for it.

Recently, I’ve started trying to pray the Divine Office, and bring it into my daily rhythm and encourage spirituality, along with my daily recitation of the Rosary.
Hoping to make prayers for others, and move deeper into prayer life, I found out about the Confraternity of the Rosary, and decided to join it.

During the the last week or so, more and more often, prayer is becoming difficult. As I pray the Rosary, in particular, my mind completely looses its pathway. Usually, my focus is on what each mystery means to me (based on the image and text excerpt).
To add to this, over the course of the complete Rosary, my feelings grow in anger and even small things seem to annoy me. It makes me hot and flustered, and want to stop praying.

The same problem seems to arise even when I try to read spiritual texts, as I was asked to as part of my last confession.

My greatest problem is as I fall over, and loose ground in prayer, I become weaker still and often fall into sin. My prayer usually comes back in this time, strengthened… :confused:

I feel completely lost and annoyed at the moment. It isn’t something that is God’s fault, I know. Perhaps I am too self-centered in prayer?

What are the suggestions from the CAF members?
Click to expand...
Pray the Saint Michael the Archangel Prayer.
Clearly you are getting closer to God, and doing God’s will. This angers the prince of lies.
Keep on going, never fear. Ask Our Lady to protect you and keep you under her holy mantle in prayer. All will be well. Thank your guardian angel often and ask your angel to pray with you.
God bless you. So long as you continue to place God first in you heart, mind, and soul, the other one can’t hurt you.
Firmly state: SATAN! BE GONE. I HAVE NO PLACE FOR YOU IN MY LIFE.
Keep holy water in your home and bless yourself with it as you come and go.

Be at peace.
I will pray for you.
Clare
 
Hey Mike, maybe you are trying to tackle to much at once and your mind knows it and is rebelling. The LOTH is a lot to take in if you are going full swing. A lot of communities only ask that you do morning, eve, and night prayers knowing that their members are very involved in apostolic work. There is only so much time in a day. I don’t know what your day entails, but consider that nursing, teaching brothers and sisters need to structure required prayer, meditation and adoration time. Still, there are times a day of prayer can not be achieved. You do the best you can and make the day a prayer.

The Rosary is a private devotion. If you can pray the rosary every day you are pleasing the Lord through the Blessed Mother. The Blessed Mother, like all mothers, assuredly had interruptions on a daily basis and still became a very revered women of the church. What I suggest is that you pray the rosary in increments; a decade “now” and a decade “later.” Divide the rosary prayer as needed so that each decade is not a burden, but a fresh meditation each time you stop to pray and give honor to the Blessed Mother.

Meditation without distractions? Even the great saints had distractions and wandering thoughts. It is the way the brain is made…sort of a insulator from harm, pain, desires and daily conflicts of the body and spirit. Don’t beat yourself up over this; it will slowly improve as you pray. Do not expect immediate results in meditation. Few seldom achieve such immediate results, but continue to practice the “art” of meditation. Again, you might try breaking the time spent in meditation into segments until you are resting in the Lord. The same with time in Adoration. As in all things it is not the time we spend in our prayers, but the quality of the prayer.

I hope this has been helpful and make sense to you, but I will pray for you and that the stones in your path become pebbles.
 
Hi Mike. I have gone through times like this myself. Sometimes even at Adoration I can’t focus enough to pray and just have to be still and let God’s graces flow over me. Because sometimes praying seems like work and it shouldn’t be like that.
Maybe throughout the day just pray little prayers instead of trying to do everything at once.
 
Thanks all for the great suggestions thus far.

With the LOTH, I generally make the Morning, Mid-day, Evening and Night prayers. Although, depending on work, I may only do the Morning, Evening and Night. If I am “sitting around do nothing,” I do try to do the other hours too, as the scripture contained within often seems to comfort me.
This is something I started after visiting a day of reflection for young men discerning vocations. It seemed like a reasonable thing to do to strengthen my prayer time.

Praying the Rosary through the day, instead of “smack bang” before bedtime (which, after all is said, leaves me at an hour where I’d like to be sleeping, instead of reading religious texts, perhaps) seems like a reasonable idea. I had considered saying even another decade in the morning, although my motivation at that time can be, lacking.
Another curiosity of mine is how one prays the Rosary in increments; would you, (for example), open the Rosary with all the usual prayers (leading from the Crucifix), then having said your chosen number of decades, just stop, or conclude the Rosary in the usual fashion?
 
CuriousMike said:
Thanks all for the great suggestions thus far.

With the LOTH, I generally make the Morning, Mid-day, Evening and Night prayers. Although, depending on work, I may only do the Morning, Evening and Night. If I am “sitting around do nothing,” I do try to do the other hours too, as the scripture contained within often seems to comfort me.
This is something I started after visiting a day of reflection for young men discerning vocations. It seemed like a reasonable thing to do to strengthen my prayer time.

Praying the Rosary through the day, instead of “smack bang” before bedtime (which, after all is said, leaves me at an hour where I’d like to be sleeping, instead of reading religious texts, perhaps) seems like a reasonable idea. I had considered saying even another decade in the morning, although my motivation at that time can be, lacking.
Another curiosity of mine is how one prays the Rosary in increments; would you, (for example), open the Rosary with all the usual prayers (leading from the Crucifix), then having said your chosen number of decades, just stop, or conclude the Rosary in the usual fashion?
Click to expand...
I pray the rosary in my car on my commute.
If I run out of time fro some reason, I just take up where I left off.
No worries.
 
To pray the Rosary in “ingremients” is where you start as normal with the normal prayers. You can divide the rosary up into ten-20 -30 beads or however you wish. End in the normal way. The number of beads are a way of keeping "track’ of how many Hail Mary’s you have prayed or where you left off. While it is a wonderful devotion it isn’t for everyone, but in time you will love it as I do.
 
It seems I have arrived a solution to these problems.

My Priest gave some interesting advice surrounding these issues - his reasoning was mostly that anger can often stem from jealousy (even sub-conscious).
For example, as a young convert, plenty of my peers are often out, about and doing what most young people these days do, and yet here I am going to Church. His suggestion was that I am questioning why I am where I am, and use this (i.e. turn around the odds) as a means of growing closer to God.

Despite being quite shocked at such a conclusion, I accepted the idea; namely because he has the Degree in Psychology, not me 😃
Having had some further time to reflect upon this, it seems to be something of reasonable conclusion - being weakened by Original sin, I guess we are predisposed to see our faith in something of a negative light, when we see what others do. It makes you wonder why you chose to take up a (your) Cross, and follow Him.

With this in mind, I am also being more cautious in how much prayer I am making. It seems I “burnt myself out” almost forcing myself into prayer, which backfired in my case.

Thanks to the folks here at CAF for making some good suggestions. I shall keep them in mind 🙂
 
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