Where do you pray? How do you pray?

I have thought alot about comforting places in our lives as well as those places we don't want to go back to.

But today I want to think more about praying places and praying spaces.

It is always amazing to me that most people I know and talk to will say that they don't know how to pray.  Prayer is so simply a conversation with God and a connection with God.  There are so many different kinds and ways to pray.

Jesus teaches his disciples in the Gospel to pray using the Lord's Prayer.  Children learn to pray before meals and bedtime.  Cade everyday says the prayer he learned at the CTK Child Development Center last year.  "Hands up high.  Hands down low.  Hands out wide and then close.  God we thank you for this food, for rest and home and all things good; for wind and rain and sun above, but most of all for those we love.  AMEN Thank you God and Jesus.

It is a simple prayer.  It was funny when he learned it, he was almost like Pavlov's dog.  He prayed it 4 times on the way from church to home one Sunday signalling us that he was ready to eat NOW.

When we lost Muffin last month to illness, we talked to Cade about Jesus taking care of Muffin.  Cade prayed for Muffin and that Jesus would keep her safe.  Its fun to watch Cade's understanding of prayer and teach me where I might need to head in prayer.

Then there is this prayer journey I have been on for awhile.  Each day I have made a conscious effort to spend time with God.  I have talked about how freeing and stress releasing it has been to make this practice.

But what about the WHERE question?  In this day and time of busy places and busy lives, where do you feel comfortable praying?  At different times and in different situations, there are many places where I want to pray.  Here lately, a nice hot bath with candles has been a great place to spend time with God.  The other day, when at the gym, I had some wonderfully uplifting music playing and had one of the most meaningful prayer times in several weeks while running on the eliptical trainer.  The quiet in myself and music playing in my ears made for great conversation time with God.

The thing is, prayer time can happen anywhere really.  Sitting in class waiting for everyone to finish the test; a traffic jam on 1604; a commercial between your favorite show.  There is no wrong time to pray.  There is no wrong way to pray.  But, we cannot live without that time of connection and reconnection with God.

And then there comes the next part -- "But I don't know what to say."  I hear that so many times from youth.  We have prayer time at the end of Sunday School that usually leads to me doing all the talking and a lot of awkward giggles.  We think we will do it wrong.  How do you pray wrong?  We have this understanding that our words won't be good enough for God?  That cannot be farther from the truth.

For the longest time I did not understand that.  For the longest time, I didn't think my words were good enough.  I remember one time at camp (yeah lots of my memories are camp memories), I did not get to sleep til well after 2 am because I just kept talking to God.  There laying in my bed, all I wanted to do was have a talk with God.  I didn't know if I was doing it right (I was only in the 8th grade) but I knew I was doing it right too.

So -- where do you pray?  how do you pray? what makes you want to have that talk with God?