Prayer and Confession

I am not Catholic and have never been to confession, but I've been thinking a lot about prayer and the forgiveness of sins lately. Catholics are supposed to go to confession regularly to relate their sins to a priest and then be told what their penance is. This could be as simple as saying a few "Hail Marys" or the Lord's Prayer, or they may have to do something for the community or apologize to or ask forgiveness from someone else.

I always thought this was kind of stupid. Why not just confess your sins straight to God through prayer? After thinking about this and reflecting on my own prayers, I realized that this is not always as easy as it seems. Prayer can be difficult sometimes. I find that I am always praying through distractions. When I am trying to talk to God, I find myself thinking about other things and quite often (if I am praying before bed) I will simply fall asleep before I am finished.

I am sure that God doesn't mind this so much, but I feel like I am failing at prayer. After a long day I like to talk to God before I go to bed, and I feel rude when I can't stay focused. I wouldn't appreciate it if I was talking to someone and they fell asleep in the middle of the conversation.

A kind of weird thing is, I have an order to my prayers. I first talk to God about the people in my life who I am worried about and I ask Him to stay with them and give them strength. Second I will tell Him about the things in my life that I am worried about and that I would like His help with. Quite often, I fall asleep during this second part and I don't make it to the third. The third part of my prayer is when I confess my sins and ask for His forgiveness. For some reason I've felt that the third is the least important part of my prayer. God already knows all of my sins and that I feel guilty and want to be forgiven for them, so why ask?

I know that this logic is wrong. I do need to ask God for forgiveness, but I'm still not sure if that should be the most important part of my prayer. I still feel that praying for the other people in my life is more important and should come first. Maybe I'm selfish and I should wait til I'm done confessing before I start asking for the things that I want.

So, how does all of this relate to going to confession? While I don't agree with having my sins forgiven by saying Hail Mary or the Lord's Prayer, it may be beneficial to confess my sins to someone out loud. You wouldn't fall asleep in confession and there wouldn't really be any distractions. It also might feel liberating to say your sins out loud to someone, kind of like mailing a secret to postsecret.

Of course, this doesn't mean that I'm going to go to a Catholic Church next Sunday and go to confession, but it might help me to change the way that I pray so that I can be better connected with God. I've already been trying to pray more throughout the day when I am wide awake. I've been trying to thank God for the little things and to remember Him and pull strength from Him during the hard times, but maybe I can do more.

There are things that I can do to keep myself from being distracted during prayer. If I am going to pray before I go to bed, maybe I need to do it sitting up, or even kneeling beside my bed to keep from falling asleep. Maybe I need to recite a prayer (like the Lord's Prayer) before I began to try and set my mind to God. Maybe I need to confess my sins out loud, or even write them down. If I wrote them down I could even go back later to look at them and think of ways to change my life so that I won't commit that sin again.



On a slightly unrelated note...

During these last few weeks I've had trouble feeling close to God. When I was younger and I would pray I would get a feeling that is sort of hard to describe. I'll try...It's almost like a feeling of physical warmth, mixed with happiness and extreme relaxation and comfort. This is the feeling that I would get when I felt really close to God. I haven't had these feelings as much lately and I think that it was something to do with the way I was praying.

While I was writing this blog I got that awesome feeling again. It feels like God is hugging me. I want to try and have this feeling during every moment of every day.

Thank you Lord.