Work, friends, and prayer

[banzai]

So the thing with work (sometimes) is that, when I decide to really dig in to one project or another, it opens into a gaping maw that can eat my whole day/week/month life. It's not really stressful so much as it just manages to fill any and all time I devote to it. The feeling of freefall is disconcerting, but it's mostly just a feeling-really, the

Comments

[jadeejf]

I have a hard time remembering to pray for someone when I say I will. The best I can usually do is to offer up a short prayer then and there, and if I happen to recall it *if* I'm praying the hours... but I figure even a short prayer is better than nothing. Writing it down also helps me sometimes- I used to keep lists. I should do that again actually. Might actually make use of the Moleskine I carry around. And then do it on the bus.

Heh, well, for a comment that was just me spouting off, it turned into something useful!

[banzai]

Yeah, there's something in me (probably something very prideful) that drags my heels at keeping a prayer list. That's kind of messed up, and my resistance certainly isn't serving God, others, or me very well.

This time around, rather than keeping a specific prayer lists, I've taken to adding prayers as recurrent items on my Remember the Milk list. Where I am now (that's such a classically post-modern way to say that!), it's more effective to have those prayers integrated into the same systems I'm using to remember and track other commitments-the prayers themselves may be separate, but there's no good reason (yet) for the tracking to be. Sounds a lot like your Moleskine idea!

[laines_list]

I've thought about putting my prayers on my to-do list. Maybe if I color-coded, it wouldn't look so odd to see:

1. Unsalted butter
2. Pray for X's mom's biopsy
3. PTO Bake Sale

When my aunt died years ago, I was cleaning out her bedroom and I found stacks of journals and lists of things she was praying for, dating back to when I was a kid. It was so encouraging and moving.

Recently, rather than saying a catchall, "You're in my thoughts and prayers," I've said what I'll be praying for, to keep myself from trivializing their concerns. Someone did that for me once and I've never forgotten what a difference it made.

[banzai]

Why am I unsurprised to read that you're considering a color coding solution?

I really like the idea of being specific when saying you'll pray for someone. There's care and commitment in that.