Three hurdles you can overcome to start praying together.

First off, I want you to know that there are LOTS of Catholic couples who pray together more often, more deliberately, and probably more effectively than we do. As in LOTS. And they amaze and inspire me. 

And then, there's us.

I think Bob and I are just like a lot of Catholic couples. Neither of us has a theology degree. Neither of us are more "holy" than anybody else (in fact, much less). But we love our faith, go to Mass every Sunday, and attend daily Mass when we can. We each do what we can to grow in our faith - things like the daily Mass readings, spiritual reading, some online articles we find helpful in living our faith, etc. We just try to be as well rounded in our faith as we can be. 

Praying together didn't exactly come naturally. We were years into our marriage, and we had been on the winding (and sometimes bumpy) road that led us to the Church. Some time after I became Catholic we were going through a bout of tough "life" things that felt pretty personal to us as a couple, so we started praying an extra prayer after grace before dinner. It was a prayer to St. Anthony and at that time I just read it aloud and Bob prayed silently. This evolved over time, but this was essentially where it started.

From there we just kept adding on. Here's a general idea of our prayers together during the day. We pray a St. Michael prayer and a Memorare together before we go to work. We pray grace together before every meal, and we say a Hail Mary for any special intentions after grace before we eat dinner. This is the way we've done it for some time now, but it may change and evolve again, who knows.

I think of this as a small thing we do to stay close to each other, and keep God close. So if you think you might want to add in just a little prayer together as a couple, I thought I would share some of the hurdles we faced, and some suggestions for overcoming them. Standard disclaimer: everyone's relationship with their spouse and with God are totally different and unique! This is just what works for us for now. Just ask God to guide you to what works for you!

Hurdle #1 - How to start.

The first hurdle I think we experienced was a general feeling of self-consciousness about "the whole thing." Praying aloud together does come with some vulnerability, and I think that's pretty natural. So when we first started praying together, it felt a little forced. But it seemed important enough to us to kind of muddle through it. So to get over this hurdle I would say to "just start." 

Hurdle #2 - What to pray.

As I mentioned, what we started out doing shifted over time. And there were shifts in the middle, too. Before we landed on the St. Michael prayer and the Memorare as our "before work" prayers, we prayed the Angelus for a while and we would take turns leading.

I should mention that we choose to use traditional prayers of the Church vs. spontaneous prayers, mostly because it's easier to jump over hurdle #1 if you both know the prayer and no one expected to come up with something profound on the spot. If you're into that, you have a ton to choose from. You could say an Our Father (always appropriate), a Glory Be, or any single prayer or combo you like! I'll link to some good prayers and resources at the bottom, so you can explore what might feel right to you.

Hurdle #3 - The flexibility issue.

The third hurdle, if you could call it a hurdle, is that we needed to build in some flexibility. And I have a couple of examples of that.

If there is something particularly bothering us, if someone we know is sick or asked for prayers, we want to call out those special intentions. So we just add either to our dinner prayer or to the morning prayer something like, "and help my big meeting go okay," or "protect this person having surgery today," you get the idea. It's just like an add-on to our usual prayers but they totally count. 

Our weekdays are pretty routine, but weekends we're often going in totally separate directions. Which brings me to our "anytime" prayer, if you can call it a prayer. We say, "Guardian Angels, activate!" We really do. No joke. 

Now, before you think we've snapped, hear me out. This little "prayer" I think is a great way to remember our Guardian Angels, ask both of them to go with us, in front of us, and guide us. It seems silly, but we love it. (I personally think kids would love this...)

Some final thoughts.

So if you know me, you know my devotion to the Rosary (if you don't know me, now you know). And you might be wondering why Bob and I don't pray the Rosary together. The shortest answer is that we think of it as more personal time with Mary and Jesus. That, and I pray it at 5 am most of  the time and there is no way BK is going to get up that early. I won't rule it out forever, I mean God's not really finished with us yet. 

My final bit of advice is just this. If you want to start praying together but your spouse is just not there yet, just pray and try to avoid nagging. I am not saying you would or do nag, but I do and I have. And it always backfires. I think one of the simplest ways to start that is least intrusive, is just to pray grace before meals (I'm on a kick on this, so here's my recent post on that subject). 

But wherever you start, whenever you start, or if you ever start, my hope and dream is that all of us will move just a little closer to God. 

Prayer resources.

USCCB general info on Catholic prayer.

Our "start work" prayers: Memorare, and St. Michael prayers. 

A more "legit" prayer to your Guardian Angel.