Although I’ve grown up Catholic, and had a deeply personal spiritual experience at 15, I’ve always had a strange relationship with prayer. Perhaps it was tied up to my notion of God. Over the last couple of months, as I’ve been journeying with my word of the year, I found myself opening up more to my spirituality. For March, I chose the theme of : healing with prayer.
What I wrote at the start of March in my Bullet Journal about Healing With Prayer
As I prayed this morning and reflected on a theme for March, I was led to – healing with prayer. The fact that this is the Lenten season makes this choice even more meaningful.
When I say prayer, I mean scripture reading, reflection, rest and spiritual reading as well.
I believe that prayer can give me clarity on the part of myself that are overwhelmed, broken, and in need of mending – the parts that are in many ways living in chaos!
Spending time each day in ‘prayer’ will help me to be more attentive, to grow more in understanding God’s love for me, in healing, in bringing more clarity to what my mission in life is at this stage.
Prayer and reflection will also help me to centre myself and learn to make appropriate responses to people and situations.
Quiet and rest will ground me further in my five principles – faith, love (and kindness), authenticity, gratitude and justice.
My writing will be more journaling. I will be reducing my blogging time and focusing more on personal writing.
Here’s the collage I made in my Bujo to go with the theme:
How March Went
As the month progressed, and with the help of some beautiful reflections by various authors (one resource detailed below), I arrived at a much deeper understanding of both prayer and myself.
I continued to write regularly on Instagram, sharing my healing journey, but didn’t blog much. More time on reflective writing and reading made a difference within me. I consciously made efforts to rest more. Also tried out some meditative practices, that I will be sharing soon.
I found my responses to situations were much less reactive and more thoughtful.
Prayer became a part of my day and though I set aside special times for reflective prayer I found myself seeking quiet a lot more. I felt a lot more joyful, loved and healed.
The following two quotes truly summarise my learnings from March.
Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds…we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up. – Anne Lamott
The real “work” of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me. To gently push aside and silence the many voices that question my goodness and to trust that I will hear the voice of blessing – that demands real effort. – Henri J.M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World
How’s your journey with your word of the year going?
Here’s a book that I’m enjoying and the playlist I created as I’m working through this book:
So apt for the meaning of Lent, to all of us as Catholics.
Thanks for stopping by, Berndette.
Hi Corinne – I’ve been following along with your journey on Facebook and I can see how deeply you’re diving into your own healing and seeking to understand where the buried hurts are and dealing with them. I think time in silence and prayer and journalling can be very revealing – I watched an interesting youtube video on the subject that you might be interested in – it’s a group discussion and then there are other videos of him speaking with each individual pastor on their personal prayer focus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMS5QNI4ABU&pp=ygUTcHJheWVyIHR5c29uIHN0YXRvbg%3D%3D
I always learn from your posts. From this post my takeaway is this line: The real “work” of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me.
This is so good, Corinne: “Prayer became a part of my day and though I set aside special times for reflective prayer I found myself seeking quiet a lot more. I felt a lot more joyful, loved and healed.” Wonderful!
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