The Celebrated Family: Praying Upside Down

I have a confession to make. Since Easter my morning prayer time has turned into drink coffee time. Instead of waking up early to start my day off with God, I have been hitting snooze, and drinking coffee in a state of exhaustion with very little actual praying. I have tried to pep talk myself back into more meaningful prayer time, but it just hasn't happened. So when I was given the opportunity to review Kelly O'Dell Stanley's new book on prayer I jumped at the chance. Praying Upside Down: A creative prayer experience to transform your time with God, sounded like just what I needed.

In Praying Upside Down, Kelly applies artistic principles such as perspective, white space, and proportion to our prayer life. Through weaving her candid and honest life stories with artistic methods, Kelly has written a beautiful and compelling book that gave me unique ideas to start getting out of the prayer rut I have been stuck in.

Each chapter ends with a Prayer Palette section. Kelly offers two or three ideas of unique ways to pray, often using artistic expressions. These Prayer Palette ideas are each such gems! They have given me dozens of ideas for my prayer life.

Some of my favorites are:

Write a love letter to God (pg 152)
Find a Psalm that resonates with a person you are praying for. Write out that Psalm substituting the pronouns or names with that person's name. ( pg 173)
Create a playlist with songs that have a connection to people in your life that you want to pray for. They do not need to be "religious" songs. When you listen to your prayer playlist as you clean the house, or drive to work, prayer for each person when their song plays. (pg 210)

This past Sunday sick kiddos kept us home from church. This unexpected quiet time allowed me the opportunity to try out some of Kelly's ideas as my own expression of sabbath worship. I doodled, and prayed, read scripture, and sat quietly on my back porch. I would never have thought of drawing as an act of prayer, but it can be, and it was. It showed me that I have gotten myself in a rut of my own making. I have set parameters on my prayer-life that I created, not God. The habit and methodology I had artificially created for prayer was leaving me feeling empty because I had become focused on the method not on God. It's time for me to change my perspective.

I love this quote from Kelly in her chapter on perspective, All Points Converge at the Horizon:

A fundamental principle of perspective is the idea that, as an object gets farther away, its size decreases. The intervening atmosphere will soften edges and lessen contrasts, making objects appear less distinct as the distance increases. When I pull farther away from God, His size, importance, and abilities seem smaller. As my perception of Him diminishes, the less aware I become of Him and the less power I give Him.... Note that God's actual size and power and willingness and presence never change. It's our perspective, our relationship to Him that does. We choose what we see by selecting where we stand. ( Pg 112-113)

This week I have headed outside in the mornings to draw, and pray, and read through the Psalms. I drink my coffee and sharpen a colored pencil. I am still tired, my circumstances have not changed this week, but my perspective has - which is a lovely gift. If you are finding yourself in a similiar rut, or a season that seems just too hard to pray through, go grab a copy of Praying Upside Down, I hope it blesses you as it has blessed me.

Praying Upside Down is available through all major book sellers. I received a free copy through The Blog Spot, in exchange for my honest feedback and review.