I tend to overcomplicate and overthink things, and this often results in my being overwhelmed and overextended. If I don’t have a routine and a structure to my day, I can be all over the place and the time will get away from me without my ever having actually accomplished anything. It’s not that I just sit around doing nothing, but that I lack focus, or rather that I get overly focused on the wrong things or too many things and gain no headway on anything. 

I’ve never been diagnosed, but it’s quite possible that I have some level of ADHD. When I was a kid, ADHD diagnoses were much more rare and, not being physically hyperactive, I suppose I didn’t cause enough trouble to warrant attention. It wasn’t until I was in my early 40’s that it occurred to me that ADHD doesn’t necessarily mean a person has to be physically hyperactive, but it can also mean that they are mentally hyperactive with no outward signs of hyperactivity at all. 

Following this train of thought, I reflected back on my life and my complete inability to pay attention to things that didn’t interest me, coupled with an absolutely laser focused obsessive attention on things that did. In school, I either got A’s or I got C’s and D’s. It all depended upon my level of interest in the subject or the teacher. Eventually, I found things outside of school that interested me more than school and I stopped attending altogether. 

Fast forward many years and this dichotomy of inattentiveness toward things that don’t interest me and obsessiveness toward things that do still rings true. It’s both a blessing and a curse, a double-edged sword if you will. However, by accepting to the best of my ability the truth of who I am and how my mind works, I have learned to harness this aspect of my nature as more of a feature than a bug. 

As an aside, I have a friend who insists that there is no such thing as ADHD. He states that there are two types of people: farming-minded people and hunter-gatherer-minded people. Farming-minded people, he theorizes are those who can sit still, stay in one place for extended periods of time, and pay attention, even when it’s boring. Hunter-gatherer-minded people, on the other hand, are always active, can’t sit still, and tend to be always on the go, unable to stay focused on the mundane, but capable of completely obsessing over that which interests them. 

Either way, not wanting to be a victim of my own mind, I have had to develop certain tools that make it possible for me to focus on what matters and accomplish the things that need to get done. Perhaps the most important tool in my toolbox is routine. Having a set routine, at least to the degree that it is possible without being overly rigid or driving my wife crazy, helps me get more of the important things done without my mind wandering to all of the unimportant things that distract me from my goals. One of my most important routines is my morning prayer hour. 

Almost every morning, I wake up at around 5:30am to do my morning prayers. Some days, I wake up earlier and some days I give myself the grace to wake up later, but it usually averages out to around 5:30am. This time is significant because it’s an hour before my daughter wakes up to get ready for school and I need that full amount of time to give the time to my prayers that feels best for me. 

One challenge with whatever condition I have, whether it be ADHD or hunter-gatherer mind, is that I can even overcomplicate prayer. For this reason, I have created a set of guidelines for myself that keep me on track. I don’t always adhere to these guidelines perfectly and if I tried to, I’d probably get burned out, but I use them as guardrails to ensure that I stay the course. 

The guidelines I made for myself are strict, but the order is not strict. In fact, the order is one place where I give myself flexibility so that I can follow the spirit, as it were, and also so that I don’t get bored. Keeping this in mind, here is a list of the things that I require of myself during my morning prayer hour. Again, the order changes from day to day. 

1. Biblical Reading: I use the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ daily Bible readings for mass which I receive in my email inbox every morning. This allows me not to have to think about what to read from day-to-day. The readings are provided for me so I can save that creative thought energy for some other task. 
2. 20 Minutes of Silent Prayer: I use the Centering Prayer app. I’ve been using this app for quite some time now. It’s free, simple to use, and follows Father Thomas Keating’s guidelines for centering prayer. There are plenty of other prayer and meditation apps out there and I’ve tried several, but this one just seems to suit me for now. 
3. Spiritual Reading: This is where I really let the spirit guide me. I have a stack of books next to my prayer chair and I am in the middle of several of them at any given time. Did someone say ADHD? Some of these books are old books of spiritual wisdom, some are more modern, and some are books of spiritual quotes or sayings. Some days I read a little bit from a few of them and other days I stick to just one. This freedom keeps me interested which is what makes the practice sustainable for me. 
4. Spiritual Writing: Every day, I write and publish something for my blog Meditations of a Gentle Warrior. These are short prayer-like poems (Psalms?) which serve multiple purposes for me. On one hand, they help me listen to what I feel like God is saying to me and to channel that creatively. On the other hand, these prayer-poems are an act of sharing. I put them into the world with the hope that some reader somewhere may feel moved by upon reading them and, therefore, by God through them, bringing that person closer to him. Additionally, I feel called to creativity and writing is one way by which I answer that call. 

As I stated above, these are merely guidelines. I follow them to the best of my ability, but I’m not perfect. That said, at night when thinking about the following day, I always take this prayer hour into consideration. My time with God in the morning has become the most important part of my day. With it, I feel closer to him. Without it, as my therapist once said, “It’s amazing how quickly things fall apart.” 

Adhering to this structure may seem burdensome to some, like it robs one of spontaneity and creativity, but I find the opposite to be true. By starting my day off with structure, with a routine, I don’t have to think about what I’m going to do first thing in the morning. I know exactly how the first part of my day is going to go, give or take. By not wasting precious energy and attention on the beginning of my day, I am therefore freed up to direct that energy and attention elsewhere, like on my daughter and my wife. 

It’s important to note that I did not develop this routine overnight. It has been worked out over a long period of time with things added and removed as the spirit directs me, but I have been using this iteration for a while and it seems to be a good fit for me for now. As my wife says to our daughter, “Subject to change.” It’s a practice and the important thing is that it requires practice. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox.