The Family that Keeps On Praying Together

Christina Antus and her family don't always succeed in praying a reverent Rosary, but she doesn't plan to give up.

It’s good for families to pray together.

I mean, there is a reason people used to do this regularly. I would imagine many people still do this, but more successfully than we do.

We pray before we eat and with our kids before bed, but that's really it. Sometimes, during Lent, Advent, or any time in the month of May, we try to pull a family Rosary together once a week ... but it usually ends up a lot like this:

Husband: “Okay, kids, who has the second mystery?”

Child A: “She counted ten beads but we still have one more.”

Child B: “No, we don’t, we said ten.”

Child A: “No, we didn’t! We only said nine!”

Child B: “Ten!”

Child A: “Nine!”

Me: “Quit fighting! Okay, one more Hail Mary, just for good measure, and then the second mystery."

Child B: “He won’t stop touching me!”

Child C: “Well, she was looking at me and I don’t want to be looked at.”

Child A: “Why is he leading the next Hail Mary? It’s my turn to lead!”

Child B: “You JUST led!”

Child A: “No I didn’t!”

Child B: “Did too!”

Husband to Child C: “Quit jumping off the couch!”

little boy jumping off the couch

Me: “SIT DOWN! NOW!”

Me again: “Why are you jumping off the couch, anyway? You know it’s not allowed. If you do it again you’re out. In bed. Done.”

Husband: “WE. ARE. TRYING. TO. PRAY!”

Child A: “Stop looking at me!”

Child B: "I can't help it, your face is in front of my eyes."

Child C: [jumps off the couch double-dog-dare style with a knowing look of guilt in his eyes]

Husband: “Everyone go to your rooms.”

Children A and B: “But we weren’t jumping off anything. Why do we have to go to our rooms?"

Me: "GO!"

Child A: "No fair."

That’s when we leave and shut the lights off behind us and everyone scrambles out of the room like cockroaches, except instead of escaping light they're running toward it.

Click to tweet:
Family is a work in progress. So is the average prayer life. #catholicmom

So.

I’m not sure if any part of a Rosary counts when it’s prayed that way.

But, we're trying here.

Family is a work in progress.

So is the average prayer life.

As Mother Teresa once said, “God does not require that we be successful, only that we be faithful.”

So, as long as we keep on keeping on, and keep pushing through each of those decades, I suppose it counts just fine, because we are dedicating time to it. We aren’t giving up. I think if we show the same dedication to family prayer time that Child C shows to rhythmic couch jumping, we’ll be making some important strides.

mom and child holding a wooden rosary, close-up of hands only