Praying With Our Eyes Open
Smiling like newlyweds, we snuggled into the first meeting of our annual marriage conference. The outstanding speaker had us laughing to tears as he entertained us. But at one point we stopped laughing and started to squirm. The topic was shared prayer time. The teacher had us rate ourselves in various areas of our marriage: Friendship – 9/10, Fun and Humor – 8/10, Commitment – 10/10, Shared Prayer – 1/10. I squirmed as I wrote it down. I considered inflating the rating, but whom would I be fooling?
Where to find the time?
Sure, we know there’s power in prayer. So why were we neglecting this powerful resource as a couple? Of course the answer is time. It’s not that we never tried to establish a time of prayer together. The challenge was finding a regular time that would encourage consistency. Bedtime didn’t work because one of us would fall asleep. Morning was not an option because one of us was still asleep. My husband, Ron, had to get up early and rush to work by 7 am. Prayer before dinner was out because neither of us wanted to wait to eat. After dinner didn’t work because the news was on, and we liked news.
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Ron, a high school teacher, comes home tired. He does not feel like exercising most days. It would be easy for him to sit in front of the TV through the news as he eats dinner, does school work, and falls asleep on the couch. It would be easy for him to neglect me as well because by the time he gets home, 150 high school students have drained his emotional energy. But we’ve established a routine of taking a walk every night after the news is over. Our yellow lab recognizes the sounds of the news ending and does his nightly dance of joy until we take him out. We have our 30-minute loop where we walk and talk along the way. We have been doing this for over eight years.
Combining prayer, couple time and exercise
It finally hit us. What about praying as we walked? With a different focus every night, the variety would keep us from getting bored and repetitious. We agreed that we would walk and pray with our eyes open. As Ron noted, isn’t that what the Christian life is all about? So now we exercise, have our couple time, and pray all at the same time.
Enriched relationship
Each evening we focus on a specific area of prayer to get us started. These are some of the topics that have worked for us:
- We share how we have recognized God at work in our lives.
- We list blessings for which we are thankful.
- We petition God for his work in our children’s lives.
- We lift up various ministries and leaders within our church body.
- We ask God’s guidance for national and world leaders.
- We each choose two missionary families and pray for their needs.
- We pray for each other and the issues we are currently facing.
The walk revives us so we have more physical energy for the evening. The talk helps us to stay in touch with what is going on throughout each day, and the prayer helps us to remain focused on Christ in our personal concerns as well as world issues. I noticed we used to walk, talk and occasionally grumble. Now we are more likely to walk, talk, and lift the circumstances of life into God’s hands. Our shared prayer time has truly enriched our marriage and our relationship with God.
