About twice a week, the nights before Lenten blog posts are due, I determine that I have absolutely nothing to write about and the time has come to whip out all the stops: The time has come to talk about my Peruvian rosary.

Whenever I write, I keep a small arsenal of backup stories for when writer’s block debilitates me and little hope can be found. These stories are rich with detail and I use them sparingly, whipping them out only in times of great writing crisis. My Peruvian rosary, which I got while hanging out with some Catholic Sisters in Peru, is one of these stories.

Last night, as my Microsoft Word Document stayed discouragingly blank and I fretted whether to share the Peruvian rosary story or save it for a day with worse writer’s block, I decided to ease my mind with a little late-night scone baking. I know a really fabulous scone recipe.

As six blackberry scones baked away in the oven, it occurred to me that my prayer life is not dissimilar from my food-making attempts. Both need recipes, or trouble ensues.

Cue Cheesy Burned Rice Casserole, the Applesauce Incident, and my infamous Veggie Chili of ’11. Each of these regrettable snafus could easily have been avoided had I just followed the recipe. Even the fabulous scone recipe has succumbed to my blunders when I once decided the baking sheet didn’t really need to be floured. (Protip: It did.)

Recipes, my friend, are my friends. Without some sort of structured prayer process, my daily prayer life consists of a very, very brief nighttime prayer that I usually fall asleep during. Unstructured prayers, for me, are essentially the Cheesy Burned Rice Casseroles of the prayer world.

During my Lenten journey, the prayer process found in Matthew Kelly’s 4 Signs of a Dynamic Catholic has served as my prayer recipe. It’s a nice mixture of gratitude, awareness, significant moments, freedom, peace and praying for others. I journal this recipe daily, and when I miss a step, my prayer recipe is a little off. Sometimes each category only gets a few words; other times, a category might get a page. Regardless, the steps get followed.

My Lenten journey serves as a reminder of why I need structured prayer and why there’s scone time like the present to start.

(See what I did there?)