6:00 am Monday morning the alarm goes off. Alex hits snooze. 9 minutes later the alarm goes off again. This time he slowly rolls out of bed and into some sweatpants. I reluctantly follow, shivering in the dark until I locate my bathrobe. By the time I've made it to the family room Alex is already there with the lamp on, holding two cups of coffee. He passes one to me and we sit down to do something we have been wanting to do since we got married 7 years ago.
We're starting our day in prayer.
I have always known that starting the day in prayer is something I should do. Reading the Word of God and offering your day to Him, first thing in the morning, sets the tone for the rest of the day. Every day of my childhood I witnessed my parents praying together in the morning, and I've seen the fruit of that prayer in their marriage and in our family. This is something I've always wanted to incorporate into my marriage, but we've never been able to make it happen. Until now.
So why now? What's changed in the seven years since our wedding day that we're finally doing this thing that we've always talked about doing?
Well, there have been two big changes. Their names are Johnny and Trixie. We love them and they make our lives so rich and full. But they also make it really hard to have a prayer life.
Before we had kids, if we didn't pray together first thing in the morning it was ok, because we could pray together while we ate breakfast, or we could sit on the porch together after work for some prayer time, or we could pray before bed because we knew we would be getting 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Now, Alex is in the middle of rotations and puts in pretty long days. I teach piano lessons up to and sometimes after dinner. Meals are a whirlwind of trying to get small people to stay in their chairs and eat their food, while scarfing our own food down as fast as possible so that we can pick up this, wipe off that, and carry those up to the bathtub to begin the marathon that is our bedtime routine. By the time both of our children are asleep we barely have the energy to talk to each other, let alone pray or read scripture together.
We realized that we were going the entire day without tending to our marriage and tending to our spiritual lives. We want our marriage to be rooted in Christ, but aside from Sunday Mass we weren't doing a whole lot to make that happen. And since getting out on a date is really hard right now, we were barely even getting time to check in with each other. So now we get up before our kids. That is our time to talk to each other without being interrupted, to discuss the day ahead, we read the scripture readings for the day, and then pray for each other and our children, and commit our day to the Lord.
It's not easy getting up this early, but it's also not impossible. Three months ago it would have been nearly impossible, all because of my favorite topic: baby sleep.
Oh, baby sleep. The thing that can make or break a day. The thing that can leave you feeling like a real person, or like an empty shell of a sub-human species. Depending on how much sleep you're getting at night, you may be able to rise before your offspring to catch some quiet time. But if your kids' sleep patterns are like ours, you need every minute of sleep you can get to be able to carry out your duties at home or at work.
Our first child was a terrible sleeper and didn't sleep through the night until he was almost two and I was pregnant with our second. By then the discomfort of pregnancy was setting in, keeping me up with hip pain or sending me to the bathroom every few hours. Then Trixie was born and I was back to nursing a baby all night long. As much as I would have liked having a little quiet time before my kids got up, I knew that in order to be a good mother, I needed every minute of sleep I could get. Prayer time happened in snippets while the kids ate breakfast, or if they happened to nap at the same time. It wasn't ideal, but that was the season I was in.
Now our second is one and a half and sleeping through the night. For the first time in almost four years Alex and I are getting a full night of sleep. Getting up early to pray no longer seems like an impossible feat.
There is one other thing that has helped us get up early. It was a decision to shelf our Chemex (used to make the fancy pour-over coffee that I love) and go back to our regular electric coffee maker.
I love my Chemex. And I think it is worth the 30 minutes it takes to make a snobbish cup of coffee. But I am not a morning person. If I'm going to get up at 6:00 am, I need a cup of coffee at 6:00 am. My husband loves me a lot, but getting up at 5:30 am to make me some coffee with the Chemex is not something he's willing to do. So we brought the old coffee maker up from the basement and programmed it for 6:00 am.
Now at night we load the dishwasher, pack lunches, and get the coffee ready. And when the alarm goes off the next morning I know that that liquid gold is waiting for me, and I can drag my sorry self out of bed. It sounds silly, but it's what I need! If there's a simple thing, albeit a silly thing, that can help you better your prayer habits, then why not go for it?
It's been two months since we started this routine. Now that I know what it feels like to have that space for prayer in the morning, I can't imagine ever going back. I look forward to the time with just my husband. I know that praying together is strengthening our marriage and making us better spouses and parents. I know that, even though it always hurts to get out of bed, there is grace to be found at that early hour. I always feel better equipped to carry out my duties for the day, when we start the day in prayer.
We're starting our day in prayer.
I have always known that starting the day in prayer is something I should do. Reading the Word of God and offering your day to Him, first thing in the morning, sets the tone for the rest of the day. Every day of my childhood I witnessed my parents praying together in the morning, and I've seen the fruit of that prayer in their marriage and in our family. This is something I've always wanted to incorporate into my marriage, but we've never been able to make it happen. Until now.
So why now? What's changed in the seven years since our wedding day that we're finally doing this thing that we've always talked about doing?
Well, there have been two big changes. Their names are Johnny and Trixie. We love them and they make our lives so rich and full. But they also make it really hard to have a prayer life.
Before we had kids, if we didn't pray together first thing in the morning it was ok, because we could pray together while we ate breakfast, or we could sit on the porch together after work for some prayer time, or we could pray before bed because we knew we would be getting 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Now, Alex is in the middle of rotations and puts in pretty long days. I teach piano lessons up to and sometimes after dinner. Meals are a whirlwind of trying to get small people to stay in their chairs and eat their food, while scarfing our own food down as fast as possible so that we can pick up this, wipe off that, and carry those up to the bathtub to begin the marathon that is our bedtime routine. By the time both of our children are asleep we barely have the energy to talk to each other, let alone pray or read scripture together.
We realized that we were going the entire day without tending to our marriage and tending to our spiritual lives. We want our marriage to be rooted in Christ, but aside from Sunday Mass we weren't doing a whole lot to make that happen. And since getting out on a date is really hard right now, we were barely even getting time to check in with each other. So now we get up before our kids. That is our time to talk to each other without being interrupted, to discuss the day ahead, we read the scripture readings for the day, and then pray for each other and our children, and commit our day to the Lord.
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| Photo credit goes to our talented friends Kristen and Jameson |
It's not easy getting up this early, but it's also not impossible. Three months ago it would have been nearly impossible, all because of my favorite topic: baby sleep.
Oh, baby sleep. The thing that can make or break a day. The thing that can leave you feeling like a real person, or like an empty shell of a sub-human species. Depending on how much sleep you're getting at night, you may be able to rise before your offspring to catch some quiet time. But if your kids' sleep patterns are like ours, you need every minute of sleep you can get to be able to carry out your duties at home or at work.
Our first child was a terrible sleeper and didn't sleep through the night until he was almost two and I was pregnant with our second. By then the discomfort of pregnancy was setting in, keeping me up with hip pain or sending me to the bathroom every few hours. Then Trixie was born and I was back to nursing a baby all night long. As much as I would have liked having a little quiet time before my kids got up, I knew that in order to be a good mother, I needed every minute of sleep I could get. Prayer time happened in snippets while the kids ate breakfast, or if they happened to nap at the same time. It wasn't ideal, but that was the season I was in.
Now our second is one and a half and sleeping through the night. For the first time in almost four years Alex and I are getting a full night of sleep. Getting up early to pray no longer seems like an impossible feat.
There is one other thing that has helped us get up early. It was a decision to shelf our Chemex (used to make the fancy pour-over coffee that I love) and go back to our regular electric coffee maker.
I love my Chemex. And I think it is worth the 30 minutes it takes to make a snobbish cup of coffee. But I am not a morning person. If I'm going to get up at 6:00 am, I need a cup of coffee at 6:00 am. My husband loves me a lot, but getting up at 5:30 am to make me some coffee with the Chemex is not something he's willing to do. So we brought the old coffee maker up from the basement and programmed it for 6:00 am.
Now at night we load the dishwasher, pack lunches, and get the coffee ready. And when the alarm goes off the next morning I know that that liquid gold is waiting for me, and I can drag my sorry self out of bed. It sounds silly, but it's what I need! If there's a simple thing, albeit a silly thing, that can help you better your prayer habits, then why not go for it?
It's been two months since we started this routine. Now that I know what it feels like to have that space for prayer in the morning, I can't imagine ever going back. I look forward to the time with just my husband. I know that praying together is strengthening our marriage and making us better spouses and parents. I know that, even though it always hurts to get out of bed, there is grace to be found at that early hour. I always feel better equipped to carry out my duties for the day, when we start the day in prayer.