Getting Back on Track With My Prayer Routine

Ah, summer. I always do so well with being on a schedule...until we go on vacation. Then it goes by the wayside. I always have good intentions of sticking to my routine but then...vacation. And I get lazy. Getting back on track with my prayer routine is a struggle. Anyone else?

Getting Off-Track

My pre-vacation morning routine looked like this: Wake up at 5:30, out the door with the dogs by 5:45 (before the squirrels are awake!), come home, eat breakfast, feed the dogs, take a shower, pray and reflect, daily mass. All of that before 9:00 a.m.! Surprisingly, I haven't been crashing in the afternoon. Well, most afternoons anyway.
Then we went on vacation. The next week I attended a conference. I did pretty well with my prayer routine on vacation...I at least prayed The Divine Office and my daily prayers. The Daily Mass Readings and journaling went by the wayside, but at least I had my talk with God. The next week at the conference, I prayed The Divine Office in the mornings while my roommate was in the shower. So that's something, right?

Except that I feel a distance to God that wasn't there 2 weeks ago. To keep a good relationship with anyone you have to communicate. It would only make sense that to regain a relationship the communication has to be there. I don't doubt that God was certainly trying to communicate with me while I was gone. It takes 2 to communicate and I'll be the first to admit that I didn't give it my best shot. I may have panicked just a bit when I returned home from the conference, realizing that I have 1 full week of summer left before I go back to work. (I know, I know! That's early for teachers to go back! Our students start July 31st!) Y'all, I really need  God to be on my side when I start the new school year!

3 Answers

The answers are quite simple:
1)Discipline yourself to start over. You had discipline in the first place, right? You know you can do it, so just do it!
2) Forgive yourself. It is what it is and there's no sense in beating yourself up about it. Our God is a merciful (and forgiving) God. If He forgives you, why not forgive yourself?
3) Slide back into it if you need to. I was so tired when I first returned home from my conference that I needed to slide back into my routine. It took me a few days but I did it.

Personally, I'm the kind of person who thrives on routine and schedules. Even so, it is kind of nice to get away from that every now and then. Getting totally out of the routine can make the return a little more difficult, but who said life is easy? So it seems that I'm getting back on track with my prayer routine just in time to have to tweak it a bit for the school year. 

In this post, I discussed why I need a daily routine and what happens when I get off track. There's even a quote included from a book that I read from every now and then that really drives things home.

Need more inspiration?

• Take a peek into Brandon Vogt's prayer life in this post.
• This article tells you why Daily Prayer is important and explains the how.
• What, how, why, and where is discussed in this post.