I’m not sure why my thoughts strayed to piano teaching the other morning, when I was praying. (Why do my thoughts ever stray at that time? A perennial question.) I recalled my conversation with Angela about the “hard parts” needing more practice than the “easy parts.”
“Think about it, honey,” I said. “If some measures are really easy for you, and some give you lots of trouble, how does it help to just start at the beginning and play the piece straight through? You’d always be playing the easy parts just as much as you do the hard ones.”
It strikes me that this must be true of practice in general, and therefore of practicing the spiritual disciplines, too. I have the same challenge facing me which faces my piano students: I have to identify the parts which give me the most problem, so that I can focus more energy on fixing those parts.
So–what are the hard things for me in the Christian walk? Is it the “praying without ceasing” command? The love of God with all that I am and have? The love of others as myself? Is it tithing or fasting or reading or meditating? It’s a good solid question, which deserves pray and seeking an answer from God. Then when the problem is identified, I can further pray about my plan for improving in that area.
Maybe I should start with keeping my thoughts from straying during prayer?
Winnowing...sorting the wheat and chaff of my thoughts 
I believe those straying thoughts are sometimes God’s interesting way of guiding us. I keep paper and pen near me so i can jot down these thoughts, capturing them, and then get back to business. He has reminded me of duties I might have otherwise forgotten, and I am very grateful to Him for it. Even if it is something unimportant that distracts me, I put it on paper to assure myself I have it safe, so I can thinkit through after prayer. Likewise during sermons: in the margins I jot down notes about my week and then forget about them for teh time, so I can concentrate on the message. I wonder if it is in these times we are still enough that He can get through to nudge us of these things?