Several years ago, I was inspired by the movie War Room to designate a space of my own for quiet time with God. In our apartment in California, I had a lot of space to work with in our bedroom closet, so I soon got to work setting up a little corner. I used a portion of the wall, underneath a shelf, to tape up prayer requests, scripture verses and other encouraging quotes. My daughter often joined me in my closet to pray, and to work on the Bible study on Prayer that I had purchased for each of us. Her contributions to my prayer wall were also sweet and heartfelt. It was an encouragement to see her faith blossoming, even while mine was beginning to bruise.
~It’s blurry on purpose for this post, but you get the gist. (April 8, 2016)~
~We had some alarming electrical issues in our rental, so the kids were concerned about a fire starting. I am glad they knew they could take that fear to God, though. (August 30, 2017)~
A few years later, we bought a new house and relocated to North Carolina. Soon after I settling in, I made a point of praying for God to lead us to a church family. He answered quite emphatically. I was heartened, and at the first ladies event that I remember attending, I remember getting excited about the prayer journal that was discussed. I bought my own prayer journal kit as soon as the session was over and brought it home, eager to get started. I wanted to get back into a more focused prayer life, and to organize my thoughts better so it wasn’t so overwhelming to pray.
The prayer reminders that I soon filled it with tell the story of a very difficult time. It was growing more and more discouraging to see prayer after prayer answered with heartache and loneliness. At least, that is how it felt in late 2019, bleeding into 2020. My initial excitement eventually wavered and that poor journal sat in a drawer for some time, occasionally brought out when I remembered it was there, and then the hurt would wash over me anew when I saw the last requests I had poured out to God in it.
~Coping with two miscarriages back to back, the second of which was during the Covid 19 shutdown…took a lot out of me. (September 9, 2025)~
I also tried to set up my closet in our new home to better suit a quiet time away from everyone else. I made up cards for each family member and stuck them to the wall behind the door. I have prayed in our bedroom closet on more than one occasion, curled up against my giant teddy bear. It was just…a very cramped and distracting place. I’ve never been able to fully make the clothing storage solutions we installed work in my favor. Half the time I don’t have the energy to refold what I accidentally knocked over in my attempt to get a shirt from the bottom of the stack. It’s just a mess! Plus, getting down on the floor for long periods of time is becoming less and less of a viable option for me. At one point, I dragged my bean bag chair into the closet quickly determined that it was way too big for the space, and hauled it back to my art room.
~The bedding fell off of the top shelf, which added to the chaos when I went to tidy it. (January 29, 2025)~
~I ended up with a fairly tidy closet but there was nowhere to sit or store my Bible supplies. (January 29, 2025)~
~My beanbag is fuller now than it was in this picture (it houses stuffed animals) but it was much too big to work in my closet, so it shall remain in my art room. (June 2, 2024)~
I had hoped that making it a goal to get my closet in order for a prayer room would somehow manifest a solution but that was being a little too optimistic. If I had a lot of money to throw at the problem, I may have been able to eventually settle on a workable plan, but we don’t have a lot to work with right now. I’ve gone up to my room a few times with the express intent of taming the chaos of my closet so that I could make this prayer space a reality, but in the end I failed to do anything but tidy a closet. It didn’t feel like a welcoming space, let alone a quiet-time-with-God space.
Then, I decided to pivot my idea of what my prayer space needed to be. It dawned on me that I have a little reading corner in my bedroom that I could repurpose, since I most often do my leisure reading downstairs in my recliner or in bed (or in the waiting room during my daughter’s ballet lessons). This area wasn’t on my radar as an option before because Raymond has worked from home ever since we moved to North Carolina, and his office space is in our bedroom as well. With his new job, he is out of the home during the week, so this opens up a lot more opportunities to use the bedroom itself for quiet time. I just needed to tidy it up a bit, and carve out a little space to store my prayer journal, Bible, and Bible journaling supplies. I also needed to replenish said supplies. My Mom came to the rescue with that one!
~My cozy reading nook in the bedroom. (June 22, 2026)~
As I’m speeding toward my 40th birthday, my Mom asked if there was anything she and my Dad could help out with that was left on my list. Most of the items remaining aren’t really things you can just buy, save for the mailbox, so at first I said not really. When I thought more about the little corner in my room, I told her about my thoughts on getting a basket or bin to put my Bible etc. in and was instructed by her to make a wish list. Immediately, she sent the highlighters, post-its and pens I’d picked out. Then I settled on a pencil case. It was the basket or bin I couldn’t settle on! I even tried looking outside of the obvious, doing searches for picnic baskets, and eventually stumbled upon a cute little caddy. It is marketed as a diaper caddy for nurseries, but it was the first storage option that had elicited any real excitement. I wasn’t sure if it would fit the items I wanted to store in it, though.
~I relocated the prayer cards from my closet to the wall behind my chair for now. (June 22, 2026)~
~I love pastel colours! My Mom was sweet to order all of this for me. (June 30, 2026)~
I did a YouTube search for Bible study set-ups (I don’t remember the exact search) and a video of a woman showed up in the results that immediately made me stop short. In the thumbnail, she was holding up two baskets that looked very much like the one I had just been taken in by. So, I skimmed through the video, saw how much she fit in hers, compared the size to the listing in the one she had purchased from another site, and concluded, This could actually work! Once I settled on the colour combo I wanted, my Mom immediately ordered it with the pencil case. Those final pieces arrived yesterday, and I got it all set up next to my chair upstairs in my bedroom. It was very exciting to see it all come together!
~This instructions said to stuff a blanket or towel inside the basket for a bit first, so that it remembered its shape after shipping. (July 7, 2026)~
~Ready to go for Bible studying and prayer time. (July 7, 2026)~
~Snapped a picture from above last night to show how much I have in my little caddy. (July 8, 2026)~
I have been using my chair to do some Bible reading, since I am following a reading plan that will allow me to read through the Bible in a year. I hope to also now use it as a quiet place to pray as well. I am currently praying that God will nudge me toward the right time to set aside for this activity, now that I have a specific place for it. I’m thankful that I was able to rethink this goal, and shift my vision around a bit to eventually make it work in the way I had intended it to. I don’t have a prayer closet, but I still have a private space that I can go to and meet with God. That’s a mission accomplished!
~I decided to update the cover of my prayer journal yesterday because I’d never put anything in the clear sleeve on the front. (July 8, 2026)~
Goal Accomplished: July 8, 2026
Leave a Reply