October 2019

   As I reflected on my current place on my walk in the Catholic faith, one thing that stood out to me was how my daily disposition has changed since I recently began daily prayer. I first began an intentional relationship with Jesus my Sophomore year at LSU, when I became more active at Christ the King, the Catholic Church Center on campus. Prior to this, I went through the motions based on the expectations placed on me by my family and my Jesuit High School education. But it was at LSU of all places where I made the active choice to participate in the Catholic faith beyond Sunday mass.
While on LSU’s campus, it was easy to surround myself with Catholic activities, including daily mass, adoration, and prayer nights, because of the amount of free time I had and the Christ-loving people I was able to surround myself with, especially the woman who would become my wife. During this time, daily prayer came easily, and transitioning into the stress of law school at LSU was smooth because of my foundation during these beginning years.

   It was not until I began my career in law that I began to struggle in my prayer life. The firm I work for is truly exceptional, recognizes the value of family life, and has been a blessing since I began over a year ago. Despite all of this, I began to struggle to maintain a daily prayer life because I wanted to impress the people at my office with my work ethic, and really dive into my job. I started to put a lot of stress on my shoulders because of this, and so my work life began to take over, and my time for prayer disappeared.

   My lovely wife, the wise woman that she is, noticed that I was more stressed out. We have been married for a little over a year now, and she can read me like a book. She had been noticing that I was a little off, and patiently began nudging me to pray with her in the morning before work, usually for only about 5 or 10 minutes. Most of the time, we just read the daily readings and discussed them. As soon as I began to give in to her nudging requests for prayer, I started to experience changes.

   The biggest change was a better perspective. Reading Jesus’ words really opened my eyes to how small my issues were in the eyes of God, and how small they should be for me in the grand scheme of my life.  It also helped me to look at my day with gratitude, and appreciate all the gifts that are hard to see when stressful issues become too big. I can only hope that my prayer habits can grow more consistent with time, because I still struggle to pray every day.

   As we approach the Thanksgiving and Christmas season, in many ways it can be more difficult to maintain a daily prayer life because of how busy it becomes. I hope that we are all able to establish stronger habits in prayer now, so that by the time we get to the birth of our Savior, we can approach Him as a friend, because we have spent time with Him every day.

   “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.”
John 15:16