If you know me at all, you know that I’m an introvert. I don’t talk a whole lot. Some might even say that I’m a man of few words. It ends up working out really well being married to Ann… because she is kind of the opposite. She says that it is like she has a word quota each day – she has to talk a certain amount (it’s a lot) or she goes a little bit crazy. I, on the other hand, go a little bit crazy if I have to talk too much. So, it works out. She talks a lot… and I don’t.

One place where my lack of talking isn’t ideal is in praying. I do pray every day, but it is usually not for very long. I tell God what is going on in my life, ask Him about things/for things, and just talk to Him. But for me, this can often be done in 3-4 sentences. I know that many others pray for long periods of time, and I have tried/done it in the past, but it is difficult and a bit uncomfortable for me. So today, I was going to spend at least 30 minutes praying.

I had to run some errands in Fullerton this morning, so I decided that I would stop in a park where I felt that I could be away from distractions. I am unfamiliar with Fullerton parks, so I looked them up on Yelp. The first one that I went to looked great on Yelp. It had a great view, some benches, and it looked a little bit woodsy. And then I got there. It was TINY and on the corner of a busy street, so it was LOUD. I thought I could make it work so I sat down on a bench. As soon as I did, a huge crane swung over the wall, nearly over my head. So I decided to find a different park.

I tried a second one and it didn’t have a parking lot?!?! I thought that was weird. And finally found a third one that was really more of a creek bed than a park, but it was great. It was much lower than the streets so I couldn’t see or hear the cars, there was a little stream that ran through it, and there were a lot of birds in the trees. The picture above is where I was. I sat on that little cement wall. Of course, over to the right, there were a bunch of rocks on the river bank with graffiti that said – Who Shot (and then I couldn’t read the name), but it made for a very funny peaceful setting.

So I took my little notebook, made some notes about people/things that I was going to pray about, put my phone on airplane mode, and started talking to God. It was surprisingly easy to pray that long once I had a list of things to pray for. Whenever I have done this in the past I just tried to pray without any plan (planning seems to keep coming up in these challenges…) and I kept running out of things to pray for. But I ended up having an awesome time alone with God. It was amazing and I definitely won’t be intimidated to do it again.

Takeaway From Today:

Planning. It has to be planning. Again. I have to give credit to Ann for this one. She suggested writing down things that I wanted to pray for and having a structure set up before I started. So I took a little notebook with me and spent some time writing down the people and things that I wanted to pray for. Then as I prayed, I flipped through my little book. The time flew by and I never once ran out of things to talk to God about. I looked at the clock once I was done going through my book and it had been 38 minutes. This is something that won’t be intimidating to me anymore, which is pretty awesome.