The Habit of Daily Prayer
Recently, I wrote an article sharing some of the most important lessons from my years parenting. These mostly came from books and blog articles. Writing the blog article about these resources reminded me to dig back into them. Which brings me to today’s article. One of the books I mentioned talked about how parents frequently do bedtime prayers with their children, but not first-thing-in-the-morning prayers. And *gasp* that applied to me too!
Consistency in Prayer
My own morning prayer routine has been shaky since the birth of Little Owl. I know this is because I am not a morning person, and I don’t drink coffee. So getting up before a little baby [to pray] is beyond my strength. And when baby wakes up early, I am usually through feeding him and his sisters are up and need breakfast before I recall I haven’t said morning prayers yet. On the other hand, sometimes the baby sleeps well and I do my morning prayers first thing, or I do at least remember to say them while feeding the baby.
So now, here I am, still struggling to be consistent in my own morning prayer. And I see the need to help my girls build this daily prayer habit.
So what do I do? I gather together some simple morning prayers, and my favourite morning prayers from my own prayer book, and make a copy for my girls! So now I have booklets for them to help them (and me) say morning prayers each morning. Now, given the inconsistency of our mornings, I wanted to set us up for daily prayer success. So instead of including all the morning prayers I do in their booklets, I put a select few. And on top of that, I don’t aim for us to say every morning prayer every morning. If we’re up late and need to get to church, we choose just one of the short morning prayers. This way, we build the habit of praying daily in the morning, regardless of the time.
More Daily Prayer Habits
Ever since Little Fox read a graphic novel about Our Lady of Fatima, she has been determined to pray a rosary every day. However, her rosary guide only included the Latin mysteries. So I decided to add our own Rosary guide to her prayer book that included how to say the rosary with the Byzantine mysteries.
And by the time I added these prayers, there were just a few blank pages left when I preview the book in booklet form. So I decided to pad the booklet out with some prayers we use during icon corner time, and with evening prayers to bookend the morning prayers. Therefore, I now have another free resource to share with you: a daily prayer booklet! Be sure to check out the daily prayer book here!
Teaching Prayers to Kids
We have a couple other free prayer resources available here at The Byzantine Life. For Lent, we have The Prayer of St Ephrem Book, The Hail Mary Prayer Book, The Magnificat Prayer Book, and the O Joyful Light Book. These books all have the words to the prayers, plus an explanation of the text for kids.
The Byzantine Life
Thank you for checking out this week’s article! Go on over to our ByzShop to collect your free printables!
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