Scatterbrained

I completely admit that many times I am scatterbrained. I have a whole lot of things going through this small brain of mine. I also get sermon ideas, blog post ideas, grocery lists, birthday present ideas, etc. that pop up at a moment's notice and take my focus off of whatever I was doing. I seem to have this same problem during my prayer time. I will begin my prayer (and it can be in a quiet room, in my bed, in my car, etc). and it can be with my eyes open or closed (well unless I'm driving then I promise they are always open :-), but no matter where or how I am praying, my attention gets diverted to another task. A good friend of mine says to keep a piece of paper near for when those thoughts creep up and then you can write them down without worrying that you will forget and then go back to focusing on your prayer. Still, I find that I can get confused when trying to pick up where I left off in my prayer. Well I wanted to share with you something from my personal retreat that I took last week. First, as a sidenote, let me just tell you how great it is to get away for some time with God. I got to a great place called Sienna Center in Racine, Wisconsin. I go with my accountability group (a few women who are also in various forms of ministry). One thing that we do while we are there is to engage in some form of creativity. For some that is needlework, water color paintings, drawing, card making, writing and beading. We bead jewelry, book marks, zip clips and prayer beads. It is this last one that I wanted to share about today. Below is the picture of the prayer beads I made (I displayed it on a rock down by the Lake Michigan; I find it Holy Ground to pray by the waters of the lake).

Each bead represents a member of my family (myself included), as well as the church and the world. For each of my family, I had a bead to pray about the joy in their lives; the works (now or in the future) of their hands; for those things that tempt them or lead them into sin; and for my children, one for relationships: those friends that they have now and whomever will be their future significant other. As my fingers walk along the beads, I am able to keep focused on who and what I am praying for and if for some reason I have to stop for a moment I can look down and see where I was at. I found it to be a deeply meaningful experience to put together these prayer beads. I spent time going through all the beads to see which ones I thought would best represent to me that person. It has been a blessing to pray using this wonderful tool and one that a lot of love went into creating. Which brings me to my final point. There is something sacred that happens when we engage in creativity. It is something God has intended for us. So often as we get older we leave creative things to the side thinking we don't have enough time, we are not "talented enough" or that it's simply for children to engage in. WRONG! God speaks through our creativity and restores us when we connect with the gifts that God has given us. So go ahead, do something creative today. Sit down and color a picture (whether you have children or not), go collect things outside or cut out pictures from a magazine and make a collage of some sort. Go by some beads and put them on a string, it can be your first set of prayer beads. Let me know how it goes or feel free to leave other ideas in the comments.
Blessings of creativity to you!