Family Prayer Styles: Find What Works For You
Maybe it's something on trend. But maybe it's not.
Dear friends,
I begged and begged God to give me children.
Sometime early in graduate school I had been diagnosed with a condition that often leads to infertility. I had to tell my boyfriend this right away (fair’s fair). His loving response made me extra sure that I wanted to marry him.
After we got married, we moved overseas, and I continued to try to work on my health. (A lot of things were wrong with my health at the time.) As it so happened, God blessed us with our first child that year (there’s a great story to this for another time!), and I was so surprised and grateful that I literally fell down on the floor in tears when I read the pregnancy test. Then I intercepted my husband on his way home from work and took him to the doors of our parish church, St-Lambert, pictured above, to tell him about our little one and pray together at the very beginning of our family.
In other words, I don’t take my or any children for granted. We have very limited control over our fertility, but every child is a gift. Many people beg for children and don’t receive them, or have to give them back to God without having the chance to raise them. Having a family is a beautiful, miraculous, extraordinary ordinary thing.
I also find, however, that having young children is not conducive to the kind of prayer life I had before I had little ones around me, the kind of prayer on which I spiritually thrived. All the things I used to do — daily Mass, evening prayer, Adoration, rosaries, long walks in conversation with the Lord — turned out to be very ill-suited to my family life. Often as a mother, I have felt starved for prayer.
True, many families thrive on a daily Rosary or family daily Mass attendance (Catholics) or reading a family devotional (Evangelicals) or another popular form of family prayer. These are certainly excellent practices. But for some (many!) other families, these forms of prayer can easily become an exercise in frustration and resentment due to particular family circumstances or personalities. The end result, too often, is that prayer either becomes a daily family misery (no good), or it disappears from family life, leaving shame and failure in its wake.
I am here today to offer some help: three alternate family prayer suggestions to consider when you find yourself in this situation.
Read about them in my quick little piece at Radiant:
“How to Find Your Family Prayer Style”
Come back and share your thoughts with us after reading.
- What was your experience of family prayer, if any, when you were growing up?
- Do you find that your favorite forms of individual prayer transfer well to praying with friends, a spouse, or children?
- What works best for you in terms of family and/or personal prayer right now?
Love your ideas! My husband and I have been focusing on evening family prayer for a bit now.
Definitely chaotic with our three (4, 2. Newborn). I think one of the biggest things is consistency, even if there are “bad” evenings when kids run amok/don’t focus, showing up is a huge part of the battle. I like your ideas of incorporating movement/activity-our kids definitely need that right now. Two things that have worked at times for our kids are a) ‘thank you God and sorry God’ (a short mini examen, and leads to some very sweet/self-aware moments occasionally) and b) repeat after me prayers (St. Patrick’s breastplate is great for this)
This is a great list of suggestions! We've had to keep things very short and simple for everyone's sake. Usually I will do a short time of Bible reading, prayer and singing with them while they eat breakfast, or are finishing up. I had to learn to not wait for "morning time" or our read aloud time, because inevitably it would get pushed off and everyone would be off on the wrong foot. We all NEED the prayer right off the bat to help the day. It's very simple -- we read slowly through a book of the Bible, sometimes they are full of questions, and other time they give me blank stares, we say prayers, recite the Nicene Creed together (at various points it's some other verse or something we're memorizing) and sing a hymn (they usually choose and 50 % of the time it's "How Firm a Foundation". Daddy always does bedtime prayers and blessings for everyone and then mealtime prayers. I'm still trying to work out when I have any sort of devotional time, but feel like I'm in the exhausted three legged race stage of that rhythm. I was able to get out for a walk and just pray and think for 45 minutes yesterday (in almost cool, non-humid air -- a wonder! -- and it was so good for my soul) but right now the fatigue makes it difficult to stay awake. I've been trying to keep prayers handy for when I'm nursing the toddler at naps and bedtime. I have grand aspirations of how it might look, but have had to learn that simple and consistent is best for my wiggly children (and then sending them to run laps before we attempt school, haha!)