I have difficulty remembering to really pray on a daily basis - and by praying, I mean more than saying grace over dinner or asking God to make the A train arrive faster. Praying feels essentially like conversing with a friend I can't see or audibly hear, which makes it really easy to space out. While praying, I'm prone to distraction from people turning on the TV or barging into the room asking to borrow a hair straightener.

I'm in awe of people who can pray continuously for an hour. I can't even go ten minutes without wondering what's for lunch that day!

Someone recommended that I treat prayer the way I treat studying or fitness. In order to stay disciplined, I need to delegate a specific place and time to devote myself wholly to that one activity. I've since come up with 3 prayer places:

In the shower. It's calm, it's relaxing, and unless you have my roommate (okay, okay, I'll stop - I've forgiven her!), you're not going to be interrupted. Call me a cheeseball, but physically cleaning myself also works a reminder how God cleans me during prayer. The only downside to showering while praying is the amount of water wasted when I take my time.
On the train. Taking public transportation's become so routine that I can now easily tune out the noises and activity around me. All it takes is an mp3 player with some praise or classical music and a total lack of interest in the surrounding conversations. The problem with praying during work, a boring class, or while studying is that I always feel as if I'm using prayer to procrastinate on other duties. When you're on the train, there's not much you have to do besides arrive at your destination.
In an empty church: As an overly dramatic child, I imagined myself fleeing to a church and collapsing onto the pews while staring up at the image of Christ looming above me. Several years later (about a year ago, to be exact), I really did find sanctuary in an empty cathedral after feeling overwhelmed by conflicts with my friends. It felt like stepping into another dimension; the familiar setting not only relaxed my nerves, but it isolated God's voice and my emotions from the opinions of other people.

I'm trying to pray for 10 minutes at a time now. Maybe next week, it'll be 15, and after that, 30....

Does anyone else have trouble concentrating? How do you stay focused while praying?

Hello everyone. I'm gonna pull a Phoebe (I watch too much Friends) and ask that you call me Regina Falangi. I've been a Christian my whole life, as I grew up with first-generation born-again Christian parents while attending a Protestant school for thirteen years. I am now a senior at what one publication dubbed "The Hottest Catholic University" and what another reported is the city's number one party school. 

Maybe God feels as if my spiritual life needs a little spicing.  

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My college friends and I constantly attempt, with a 75% success rate, to dig up dirt on each other. The juiciest tidbits consist of the typical "night I got drunk" stories, things we did behind our parents' backs and the occasional cheating on a test or misguided sexcapade. I say 75% because of the one thing I've concealed from them.

Four years ago, while on an evangelical missions trip in East Asia, a friend and I converted a teenager to Christianity. I can't imagine how out of place that anecdote would be in a conversation loaded with F-bombs and high-fives over hookups and narrow escapes from campus authorities. 

It's generally acknowledged that if you mix your drinks, you're an idiot, but if you evangelize or converse with intangible entities, you're a freak. Four years ago, I was enough of a freak to freely talked about Christ's sacrifice and what it meant to me. Now, I'm not even freaky enough to admit that I actually pray. 

I still remember the boy's name: Gordon. I think about Gordon all the time. Before we left, my friend and I told him where he could go to buy smuggled Bibles and attend underground church services. That was the last time we ever saw him and after a few sparse emails, we completely lost contact with each other.

I hesitate to share the details of my missions trip with anyone, even with my real-life Christian acquaintances because I feel ashamed of how far I've fallen since then. I can't talk about God amongst my college friends without stammering, much less think about how I helped someone find God four years ago.

I feel like such a Judas when I think about Gordon. I'm not a stellar person, and I wasn't that great back then either, but for some unknown reason, God chose me to relay the message of His grace. In retrospect, God changed me as much as He changed Gordon. The experience of praying with someone in that way introduced me to a greater love and awe for God. I just couldn't believe that God would choose someone who never did her devotions, never listened in church, and never talked about God in normal conversations. I felt the Holy Spirit reminding me of verses I'd only read once, and giving answers (in my second language, no less) that were new to me, even as their speaker. After that, I had no problem including God in regular dialogue, as if He were my next-door neighbor or a classmate.

I feel ashamed when thinking about Gordon because I've forgotten what a privilege it was to be included in his life during that moment of conversion.

After my sophomore year of college, God the Father became reduced to God the Divine Powers - as in, "I need to get an A on this exam, so let's hope that the divine powers have mercy on me."

I often wonder what Gordon's doing, or more importantly, *how* he's doing, but during those moments, God tells me ot leave Gordon to Him and to focus on my relationship with Him first.

How does one even begin to mend a perpetually strained relationship? Excuse the corny (and probably inappropriate) comparison, but I feel like Big from Sex and the City. Someone's always taking me back. How do I even thank Him for that?

The repairing might take awhile, but perhaps the next time people ask me how I manage to earn good grades in college, I will answer that it is nothing less than the grace of God.