catholic – Surprised By Marriage

Are you tired of me talking about this yet? I hope not, because it’s so important!

7 ways to pray with your spouse (1)

Even though Logan and I pray together every night before bed (when we’re both home, at least, and going to bed at the same time, which is most nights), we’ve realized the importance of changing up our prayer routine a bit. So I thought I’d share some ways you can pray together with your spouse.

Spontaneous prayer. This is what Logan and I mostly do every night. Logan leads and starts with thanksgiving and adoration, then intentions. I add intentions, and we close by asking our family litany of saints for prayers too.
Rosary. We usually pray the Rosary individually – Logan during his work commute and me at home – but during long car rides we pray together. And we recently started praying a rosary together on Logan’s off days. (I completely admire couples who pray the Rosary together everyday!)
Liturgy of the Hours. We’re not always up at the same time to do Morning Prayer, and Evening Prayer is hard to fit in with homework, dinner, and bedtime. But we have prayed Night Prayer together, which is my favorite. It’s the perfect way to end the day – and it’s even better when you pray it with your spouse! And maybe one day our schedule will allow to either do Morning or Evening Prayer together…
Devotional Book. We just finished Forever and highly recommend it! Each chapter takes about 5 minutes – reflection, challenge, and a prayer. This is a great way to ease into praying together, I think.
Mass. The entire Mass is a prayer! It’s hard to remember sometimes, especially if you have little kids and can’t focus the entire time. But going to Mass together is a lovely way to pray together.
Lecto Divina. This is the one thing we need to start doing. We’ve been reading the Mass readings together with our handy dandy Every Sacred Sunday journal and talking about what spoke to us, but we haven’t really delved into praying with it together yet. But, baby steps!
Retreat. This is one of those things that you won’t realize how important/helpful/fruitful it is until you actually do it. Getting away to a prayerful setting, embracing the Sacraments, and being able to focus on God and your spouse for an entire day or two is one of the best things ever. We’ve been on two and are going on another one soon! Every time has been such a source of strength and renewal in our marriage. Highly, highly recommend it.

Now you share! What’s your favorite way to pray with your spouse? What has helped you stay consistent with it?

And here’s our video on praying together if you missed it:

In case you missed it, I hosted a weekly marriage challenge this month! Read the previous posts: week 1, week 2, week 3, and week 4.

Copy of Habits we do every day (2)

How I did on Week 4, praying for your spouse

Well, I did pray for Logan every day! I pray a daily rosary, so I also made sure a couple of those were solely for his intentions. This challenge really did help me remember to pray for him more. There was one day I slacked off a little and honestly, on the days that I was on top of it, I noticed that he was a better husband and father – more loving, more patient, etc.

There was one specific intention I was praying for a lot, and halfway through the week, an opportunity came up that might be answer to that prayer! (Prayers appreciated for that, please and thank you.) Prayer is pretty powerful!

How about you? Did you pray for your spouse every day? What helped you?

Bringing it together

I honestly thought at the beginning of this month that these challenges wouldn’t really make a difference, because we’re doing pretty well right now and are pretty much doing all of these things anyway (well, we’ve been slacking on date night, but part of that has been because of sick kids).

But every single week, I was actually very grateful for each specific challenge, because it is SO easy to slack off. Yes, we pray together, and yes, we’re vulnerable with each other, and yes, I pray for Logan. We’re not perfect at it though…not even close. We had some really bad days this month and it was nice to have some accountability with these challenges.

My biggest takeaway is that even when you think you’re doing fine, you could always be doing better.

Your thoughts

What did you think about the challenges? Were they helpful? Would you be interested in doing A Month for Your Marriage again (with different challenges, of course)? What would you change? Would you be interested in getting the challenges via email? I’d love to hear from you!

I hope everyone has a blessed Triduum and a very happy Easter!