Prayer & Tea & My Epic Lack of Discipline

Ok, so I am not the most disciplined person on the planet.  Heck, I am not even close.  I struggle with the idea of waking up at the same time every day, having a morning or night-time ritual, trying to follow a schedule, remembering to take my vitamins every morning....  I think you get the idea right?  Now don't get me wrong.  I see the value in structure and time management.  I always look up to those people who get up in the morning, exercise (or not) and take time for breakfast and dressing nicely, and personal grooming (that isn't chapstick and a ponytail.)  Every New Year's I resolve to become one of them.  Every year I fail.

Yet I am having a child, and that means needing to learn to structure things a bit more.  It's a simple fact.  Kids do better with some structure in their life, and establishing routine is particularly important in early life and infancy (in as much as you can.)  Over-scheduling and over-structuring is just as detrimental as complete freedom, I know (and thank you Lenore Skenazy for reminding over-involved parents of this), but my current style needs some tweaking before LOU comes into this world.  (Lou - Little One in my Uterus.  'Cause you knew I was going to nickname the foetus living parasitically off my body for the next seven or so months.)

So this year, once again, I have resolved to improve my time-management skills and my self-discipline since I really do believe the two go hand-in-hand.  This of course, brings me to the title of this post.  Prayer.  Prayer is a discipline, and as I have said, discipline is not my forte.  So my prayer practice is lacking.  Do I pray?  Absolutely.  Do I prayer regularly?  Heck no.  I talk (and rant, and complain, and plead, and occasionally try making bad jokes toward) to God as I feel like it.  Some days this means I do a lot, some days this means not at all, and the overall lack of structure and almost mindless nature of it means that my prayer practice is really lacking in something, mostly in giving God a chance to answer. 

So my minister introduced me to Lectio Divino in the fall.  When I tried it then, it worked for me.  The mindful reading, contemplation and meditation was an expansion on skills I had already developed as an English student in University.  I have long been comfortable with text and looking into text and reading the black and white spaces on the page, and so adding a deeper layer, and more mindful practice to that was, while not easy, at least easier than just trying to force myself to sit down and "pray." 

So maybe I can't follow the traditional monastic practice of getting up early to devote a full hour to the practice every single day, but I am going to try and add a (shorter) practice to my regular life, and with any luck, stick to it.  So far, I am only a couple of days into this experiment and so far it is working.  Every other day, when I get home from school, I pour myself a cup of tea and sit down with me Bible.  Oh the tea is an essential component for me.  A good cup of tea, herbal or otherwise, is part of the 'ritual' and helps get me into the right headspace by giving me something to focus my senses on, and thereby freeing up my mind for the spiritual work ahead.  Then again, there are days when I truly believe that God gave us tea so that on off days, there would be an infinitesimally small, but infinitesimally comforting, physical manifesting of God's embrace.  Ok, maybe I give tea too much credit...

So here’s to attempting to learn self-discipline, and who knows, maybe if I can make this work, maybe I can start exercising regularly or getting up and getting ready more than ten minutes before I have to be out the door? 

Yeah right.