Prayer Trouble

For a long while now I’ve been having some trouble starting prayer. I don’t know, I can’t get the energy or motivation to pray. I think about praying a lot, but for some reason it feels like “too much effort” to just START the prayer. It’s like there is a wall that I keep running into when I think about prayer. I get to this point where I want to pray, but I can’t do it. It’s hard to explain, it’s like running into glass. I can picture myself praying, visualize it, but I can’t get into the position or mind/heart-frame to actually pray. And sometimes if I start it kind of falls away while I’m praying, like my mouth and mind just stop working and the whole prayer fades away. It’s so frustrating! And then there are times where I want to pray so badly but I can’t think of anything to say. And I know that God knows my heart and sees what’s going on inside of me – all the emotion that’s there – but I want to be able to put those emotions into words, if not for God then for me. I want to be able to express my prayers to myself. But sometimes my thoughts and emotions are just too overwhelming that I can’t speak them. So at that point I just sit still and visualize myself falling face down at the feet of the Lord, crying and screaming without really speaking, just expressing my joy or pain or whatever just in this place where it’s just me and God and He understands everything. Sometimes I physically just fall down while I imagine this, imagine myself in the visible presence of God and just giving everything in me to Him in worship, and that helps, and I know He can hear that, which is good because I am such a quiet person; it’s hard for me to raise my voice or be loud at all, so I’m so thankful God sees my heart. But these times when I can’t get the momentum of prayer going, that’s hard to deal with. I find myself “unable” to think of something to pray, or just so cloudy in my mind that I can’t think of anything at all. I WANT to be able to pray, I want to glorify God, but a lot of the time if feels like there is some kind of fuzz penetrating me that prevents me from doing it, or like I am running into a wall that has no door. Sometimes I think I need to listen to someone else pray first to get me started. Maybe I should record myself praying when I get in the mood so that I can have it handy and listen to it when I can’t get started, and that way I can also have my own recording of the things I am thankful for. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea, I think I’ll do that eventually.