Praying With Your Spouse: FtJ 7

“Prayer is the most intimate experience a couple can share.”

– Deacon James Keating, Spousal Prayer: A Way to Marital Happiness

Before Discussion Notes:

Podcast Interview with Deacon James Keating (interview is featured in minutes 26-36)

• Going right to the source of love & truth when you pray together.
• Deepens and unifies the bond of marriage.
• Bringing everything to the trinity every day results in graces that ground the marriage in the source of love itself.
• Is your foundation firm enough to pray? The main reason couples don’t pray together is lack of trust.
• Behold your spouse, Listen to your spouse, Forgive your spouse. Live this rhythm in order to pray. These are the same things we need to do with God- Behold His beauty, Listen to Him love us, Repent to gain His forgiveness.
• Praying with your spouse is the answer to the quest for “more” in your marriage.
• Schedule a half hour every day for praying together.
  
  

The Power of Praying With Your Spouse by Abundantly Yours Podcast

– This podcast is more in story form, but it has some pockets of wisdom.

• Where are you now in your life? When can you schedule prayer with your spouse? Where can we make prayer in this season?
• Be realistic in meeting each other from different places of personal prayer. Don’t place too hard of a demand on the expectation on what your prayer life should look like.
• Anything to build the habit is helpful. Commit to that daily small habit.
• If your spouse is reluctant to pray with you, lead by example. Don’t force it. Commit to prayer yourself and pray for a change of heart in your spouse.
• Set a goal if you’re just starting from scratch. You don’t have to romanticize it.
• Prayer doesn’t have to be “productive.” It’s being intentionally present with the Lord in that moment.
• You can baby step in prayer. The rosary is one bead at a time.
• Attitude of gratitude for the mundane, little things of our day and using those times for prayer.
• Remember to trust in the Lord always and bring everything, no matter how small, to Him. Trust in the Lord’s plan. Surrender to Him every day in that day and moment.

Praying With Your Spouse: A Step-By-Step Guide to Get You Through the Awkwardness

This article’s gifs are perfection. It lightheartedly gives some practical tips on how to pray with your spouse.

• Step One: Accept the awkwardness
• Step Two: Use your words.
• Step Three: Sharing is caring.
• Aren’t we all called to lead each other to heaven? Or would it just be too awkward?

As life goes on, they become not two compatible beings who have learned to live together through self-suppression and patience, but one new and richer being, fused in the fires of God’s love and tempered of the best of both. One by one, the veils of life’s mysteries have been lifted. The flesh, they found, was too precocious to reveal its own mystery; then came the mystery of the other’s inner life, disclosed in the raising of young minds and hearts in the ways of God;

Ven. Fulton J. Sheen, Three to Get Married

After Discussion Notes:

• It can be hard to find time to pray with our spouses. The time that seems to happen naturally is right before bed, but it’s hard if you’re tired to stay focused and intentional.
• Husbands are the spiritual head of the household, but it can often be the wife who initiates prayer time.
• Start small by coming together to pray once a week. It’s also a good time to run down the week’s schedule and menu together.
• Sometimes, we get stuck on saying formal prayers and going through a routine. Formal prayers are wonderful, but it’s important to talk out loud to God with your spouse too. It can feel awkward and opens us up to being vulnerable, but we can meet each other where we are with God.
• Switching off who leads the prayers daily can help lessen the pressure off of one person and allow both spouses to say what’s on their heart.
• Praying together bridges a spiritual gap and brings a husband and wife closer in spiritual intimacy.