Val Warner is the owner of Valmarie Paper and the author of Grumpy Mom takes a holiday in the finishing school.

Her mission is to create practical tools, including

prompted prayer journals and content that equips people to cut through the noise of

everyday life and find fullness in the presence of God.

She lives in South Louisiana with her husband Tyler and two daughters.

Today she joined Rachel and I to have a conversation about prayer, journaling,

and practically how the two can enrich your daily life with God.

We hope after listening today that you will feel empowered and encouraged to cultivate a lifestyle of prayer.

Also you can watch this conversation on our new vlog by checking out our YouTube channel.

Just search the word first of team on YouTube.

Welcome to this special episode of the first of team podcast. Thank you.

Vow, thanks so much for making time to be able to share the things that you've learned about prayer and journaling with our audience. I'm so grateful for our audience to get to hear the things that the

Lord's taught you about prayer and journaling today.

Thank you so much for having me out. This is my favorite topic so I'm

excited to chat.

Amazing. All right so let's just kick it off.

I'd love to ask, why did prayer and journaling become so integral to your life and maybe tell us a little bit of story

about how that began for you?

Yeah, so I have always, I feel like my mom was a prayer and I don't know if she always was or if it was just because I was always coming to her with worries and problems and different things like that in my childhood but her answer was always

to pray so I feel like I learned about prayer and like knowing the value of being able to come to

God with anything little like the smallest things from an early age. But it wasn't until my

pregnancy with my first daughter that I felt like I know I can come to him and I want to come to him, but the distractions of the world, I felt like we're just overwhelming me in that season and writing things down was the only way that I found to keep my mind really focused on him because

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