Did you think to Pray?

As a member of the LDS Church I have not always followed all of the tenants of the faith, and maybe this is not just an LDS thing, but for me prayer was not that important to me.  I was taught to pray like everyone else at a young age, but to do it daily has always been a struggle, and at one point I did not even pray for years unless I was asked to do so at church.

Growing up I would always use the example of praying for the right things and use the experience I had when I was about 11 or 12.  I ran for student council president.  There was like five of use running, and I ran a pretty good campaign.  The night before the vote I prayed that I would win. Well you can guess what happened.  I did not win, but I only lost by one vote.  I do not think that my pray was a righteous prayer, because I was not praying for the right thing.  After that I did not pray that much, but it was not because of this experience.  Was it just laziness?

At 19 I went on my mission to Ireland.  Let me tell you one of those dirty little secerts of serving a mission.  If a missionary wakes up and gets out of  bed, knells at his bed to pray with his blanket over his head, and he is there for 15 or 20 minutes, he is not praying, but sleeping.  Everyone I knew did it. But I did say a lot of prayers on my mission.  Prayed everyday.  I came home and for awhile, it was not hard to miss.  But after a time, I started skipping prayers.  To where there was not a pray not said out side of church.

But for me, one of the struggles with pray is what to say.  I always cringe when ask to pray, am I going to say the right things.  Am I going to saying something that will make people ask, why did he say that. Maybe this was a product of my learning disability?

So here I am over 20 years removed for the mission, and I am trying to get my life in order again.  Really trying at this religion thing and not faking it like I had for so long.  For the past few years, there is not a day that I miss praying.  I try to pray twice a day but sometimes I miss.  I have even woken up at 1 or 2 in the morning and said a pray because I forgot.

And I struggle for my prays not to sound repeated.  For a few months I had been praying with a woman I had been somewhat dating.  I really hated it, because I did not know what to ask for or pray for and then I had this big huge list of people that I pray for.

I question myself all the time if I really do feel that there is power in prayer.  Some days I would out rightly tell you yes, but there are days I still wonder why I pray to someone that is not listening to me or does not care for me at all.  I am still working on that.

I guess this is one of my failings.  On the outside I wanted or made everyone thing that Bill was this good righteous Mormon, but on the inside I was always living the lie.  Not doing all that I could do.  And that is my fault, and I have to walk that long road knowing that God does answer prayers but not all of them.