I have a confession: my “quiet time with the Lord” happens most days in the bathroom, door shut (mostly), water running so it sounds like I’m doing something productive, whispering “Lord, help me” while nobody is actively touching me for once.
I used to feel guilty about this. I pictured “real” quiet time as a journal, soft worship music, maybe a blanket and a cup of tea that stays hot the whole time (a luxury I have not experienced since roughly 2016). I thought if I couldn’t do THAT, I wasn’t really doing devotions at all.
Here’s the thing nobody tells you about being a mom of six: there is no locked door in this house, physically or metaphorically. My room? Free-for-all — they walk in like it’s a public library. So the bathroom became my last line of defense. Except even that’s not sacred. One afternoon, mid-prayer, door shut, fan on, one of my kids still found me. Of course she did. She peeked her head in and said, “Are you praying in here?” And I said, without even thinking, “Yeah, baby. Mommy prays everywhere.” And she just nodded, like that made total sense, and wandered back off to referee whatever her siblings were fighting about.
That’s when it hit me: she wasn’t confused that I was praying in a bathroom. She was learning that prayer isn’t a place, it’s a posture. It’s something you carry, not something you schedule perfectly behind a door that actually locks.
I think about Daniel praying three times a day in the middle of a hostile kingdom, and Nehemiah shooting up a one-second prayer to God before answering the king — mid-conversation, no blanket, just “Lord help me” right in the moment he needed it (Nehemiah 2:4). If that counts as real prayer for a guy about to risk his life in front of a king, I think it counts for a mom hiding in her own bathroom for ninety seconds with the water running.
So here’s my radical proposal: quiet time doesn’t have to be quiet, and it doesn’t have to be private. It has to be real. Some days that’s fifteen minutes with actual scripture open. Most days it’s ninety seconds, running water, an interruption mid-sentence, and “Lord, help me not lose it today.” God hears both.
If you want somewhere to actually catch those ninety-second prayers instead of losing them to the chaos, I made a simple prayer journal you can grab here: maxwellfusion.gumroad.com/l/telswh. It’s built for real life, not a Pinterest version of quiet time.
Have you given your life to God? Not sure? Let’s settle it right now. You don’t need the perfect setup, the perfect words, or a locked door. You can talk to Him exactly where you are, even if that’s a bathroom with the fan on and a kid about to knock. Jesus made the way for that conversation to even be possible. “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). If you want that relationship starting today, pray this with me, right where you are:
“God, I don’t really know how to do this, but I want to know You. I believe Jesus died for me and rose again. Please forgive me and come into my life. I’m trusting You from here on out. Amen.”
Welcome to the family.
If you prayed that for the first time, or if you need someone to pray with you over anything you’re carrying today, send me a note at maxwellfusion6@gmail.com — I’d love to pray with you.
Need prayer, or have a testimony to share? Send me a prayer request or tell me what God has done. If you prayed to receive Jesus today, I want to celebrate with you. I read every message and pray over each one by name.
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