A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World Book

I am very ambivalent about this book. While there are parts that I really enjoyed, there are other parts that really annoyed me.

I enjoyed learning about the author's autistic daughter Kim. He is very open with the struggles she has faced, and the prayers he has had for her over the years.

The author also says that Jesus' example teaches us that prayer is about relationship. When Jesus prays, he is not performing a duty; he is getting close to his Father.

Yet then the author goes on to make it seem as though prayer is hard, and even makes it out to be work. He talks about creating prayer cards to flip through every time you pray, focusing on all the individuals close to you, cards for areas of your life you want to improve, and cards for friends and non-believers, and to pray the prayers on these cards over and over. Or if you don't want to do cards he says to create a prayer journal along the same idea. He believes that if we don't write down our prayer requests, we don't take prayer seriously. Seriously?

Then the author goes on to describe a summary of a typical morning of prayer for him. This summary included setting his alarm for five forty to get up to pray, then sleeping through the alarm for five minutes, than crawling out of bed, getting dressed, and going down to a living room chair to pray through his cards. Then, as soon as he sat down, his autistic daughter began to pace upstairs, so she had to yell at her to go back to bed. Then he prayed through his cards, then his daughter started pacing again, so he yelled at her again to go back to bed, then he prayed more through his cards. Then he was again interrupted by his autistic daughter pacing upstairs, so he stopped praying, went upstairs (since yelling at her wasn't working) and told her to stay in bed. This made her so angry she bit her arm. Then he threatened to take away privileges for the day, which made her bite her arm again. After she calmed down, he went back to his praying.

The author apparently wrote about the interruptions from his autistic daughter to show that prayer time may not be perfect. Yet the whole time I was reading his prayer scenario, all I could think was "This is not how prayer is supposed to be" and "This is not what God would want for prayer time". I wanted to tell him "Put down your cards, and go comfort and deal with your daughter." I don't understand why he felt he had to set an alarm (which he wanted to sleep through) to pray. Pray in your own bed. Comfort your daughter, lay down with her if you want her to stay in bed, and pray while laying in bed with her. Pray in the shower. Pray while driving. Pray while going for a walk. Why make prayer a chore? Why yell at and neglect your family because they are interrupting your prayer time? I just didn't get it.

Yet this book has excellent reviews and a very high average rating here on Goodreads, so maybe I am missing his point. Or maybe his idea of praying and my idea of praying just don't match.