This year, my oldest turned 10. For years, I had heard other families talk about how 10 is a magical number. It’s when (most) kids reach some growth point, when something just clicks. To illustrate, my daughter will ask things like: “Hey mom, do you need help with anything?”
If that’s not growth, I don’t know what is.
But there’s also the reality that every parent faces: she’s growing up. In reflecting on this reality, I was grappling with a question: if there was only one thing I could teach my daughter (or any of my children), what would it be?
While changing a tire and balancing a checkbook are important, those aren’t at the top of the list. If there has to be only one thing that I want to share: it’s prayer.
I’m sure like many of us, my prayer life didn’t take root until I was an adult. And of course, it’s still maturing, growing, and changing. But it has become such an essential part of my faith and my daily life, that it is the gift that I would hope to share.
Now, I want to switch from my daughter to my friend: a fellow dad, raised Catholic, goes to Mass, sends his kids to Catholic school, but no real prayer life.
I don’t think he is unique there. And why is that?
Maybe he was never taught to pray. Maybe he doesn’t have the desire to pray. Maybe he doesn’t know why he should pray. Maybe he’s tried before and “didn’t get anything out of it.”
At the end of the day, I don’t know the reason. But thinking of my daughter and my friend, and countless others out there, made me want to share a bit of my journey with prayer, the fruit that I’ve received, and thoughts and insights that have come from a variety of places along the way.
If it speaks to you, then it has done some good, but it might not speak to you, and that’s okay. We’re each on our own journey.
Let’s begin.
While one of my motives for writing this is my children, they wouldn’t understand it. At least not right now. Because the frame that I want to present prayer through is that of love, romantic love.
Many of you are married, in a relationship, hope to be in a relationship, or at least had romantic feelings toward another human being (probably?). I think that all of us have some feeling or idea of what it’s like to be in love. I fell in love when I was 19 and our love has gone through many stages and seasons, which is how I want us to begin to think of prayer.
A Glance
I have three vivid memories of interactions with my wife before we really knew each other. (Sidenote: she doesn’t remember these, but that’s okay). The first was freshman year of college, and at the time, I was kinda dating a friend of hers. In the dorms, I remember meeting my wife and hearing her name for the first time. It was the beginning of our story, and like all relationships, it started with a name and a face.
After that, we ran into each other walking across campus or I’d see her eating with friends in the dining hall. Each time, the picture became a little more full. And slowly something was happening. My heart would stir at the sound of her name. And while I still didn’t really know anything about her, I started to wonder: what did her laugh sound like, where was home for her, what kind of food did she like. But for the most part, all I had to go on was those: a name and a face. That was the beginning.
This is the starting place of prayer. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux said it this way: “For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven.”
What the Incarnation did for us (among many things) is give God a name and a face. And even if we don’t really know much about God, we know His Name and we know His Face. And no matter how far we progress in the spiritual life, we can always turn to Him. We can glance toward Heaven, throughout our day and every day. You could argue the shortest prayer in our arsenal is simply “Jesus.” And He never tires of this prayer. (I’ll double check with my wife if she wants me to stop thinking of her throughout the day.)
A Song
Between our freshman and sophomore years, my wife and I both volunteered at orientation weekend (the other young woman was out of the picture by now). We ended up sitting together at lunch with a group of friends. It was the first time that I had an extended conversation with her. While it was very surface-level compared to the conversations we would later have, it was starting to fill in some of the details and it was the start of our friendship and dating.
And over the months and years, like all young relationships there were a lot of feelings. Over time, as many have experienced, certain songs became our songs, because they struck a chord in our relationship (again, pun intended). Songs are powerful and can make you think of certain people, or a certain time or place in your life.
For example, one of “our songs” from our college years went: “We’ll go dancing in the minefields, we’ll go sailing in the storms. It was harder than I believed, but I believe that’s what the promise was for.”
A month after our wedding my wife was diagnosed with cancer. These words took on a whole new meaning. Every time I hear the song, it is the same exact words, but it stirs something in my heart, in my love for my wife.
Now, I’m not about to tell you about some Praise and Worship hymn, but my point is that in relationships we often express ourselves using words that are not our own. Most notably in our faith, we can think of prayers like the Our Father or the Hail Mary or countless others.
These prayers can become “our songs” in our relationship with the Lord. We should lean on these prayers often and quickly because they’re the words that our Church gives us. In many ways, it’s the best we have to offer. It would be silly to say because we’re repeating the same words, they lack meaning. Like my wife and I never tire of hearing those familiar songs, our Lord (and our Lady) never tire of hearing these prayers.
A Conversation
Ever since we started dating and even up until now, my wife and I have always taken long car trips together. Whether it was visiting family, moving to new towns, or when my wife was a FOCUS missionary in Louisiana, we were often driving together.
Those were some of my favorite times because when you’re on a road trip, there’s really only so many things you can do. While I’ve already talked about listening to music, when you’re in a car for 18 hours, sometimes you can only listen to so much music. But being together, talking, plunging into the depths of conversation about life, love, and our future together: this is where the relationship was really built.
It’s still one of my favorite things to do with my wife: just hop in the car and drive somewhere. Because it’s just us and the outside world is at least separated by a piece of glass.
This is the hope that we get to in our prayer life. The saints would call this colloquy, which means conversation with God, both speaking and listening.
Like in the car, it’s not just one of us talking the whole time (although there might be times where one of us talks a lot). It’s when we both talk and listen, when we grow closer together.
And if you wonder what you talk to God about, well Saint Josemaría Escrivá answers: “About Him and yourself: joys, sorrows, successes and failures, great ambitions, daily worries -- even your weaknesses! And acts of thanksgiving and petitions -- and love and reparation.”
A Light
Here is where we address the elephant in the room, or the lack thereof. When we’re talking in the car or at home, my wife can be next to me in a physical, human sense. Our Lord, while He’s always with us, is not present in the same exact way, which means our conversations are not the same.
This was something that I learned much later in my prayer journey. In conversation with my wife, I speak, then I listen, and then she speaks, then she listens. There’s very much this back and forth. But in prayer, how do we listen? How does God speak?
It’s not like a lightning strike from heaven or the voice of God thundering into the room.
Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen wrote: “God replies by sending graces of light and love, which make us understand His ways better… Therefore, to listen means to accept these graces and to strive to profit by them.”
Our Lord is so intimately with us that the conversation is being led by Him, and He’s using thoughts and inspirations to guide us. It’s those little bits of light and love that are Him speaking into us, into our thought process, into the journey that our minds and our hearts are going through to reach Him.
That is the Lord speaking.
Another analogy might prove helpful. Human conversation is more like being on the old railroad carts, where you have the seesaw lever in the middle. One person pumps up while the other pumps down, and that’s what propels you forward.
Conversation with our Lord is much more like sailing, where one of us might be rowing, one of us might be working the sails, one of us might be working the rudder, and then you still have the current and the wind. All of it is what pushes you in a direction. Sometimes the current and wind just take you. Sometimes you have to row a little bit more. Sometimes our Lord is clearly handling the rudder. Other times, we have to navigate the best that we can with the information that we have.
This is how intimacy grows. This is where the relationship with our Lord gets depth and richness. And it’s a journey that takes a lifetime.
12 Years Later
My wife and I just celebrated our wedding anniversary and after 12 years of marriage, I think about her all the time. I love listening to songs that remind me of her, that stir up memories from the past, that speak to our current season in ways that are new and different. I still cherish long car rides together. Of course, now, most of the time, those conversations are frequently interrupted by five new voices coming from the back of the car.
But my point is that as we progress in prayer, we don’t move from one to the next, leaving the previous methods behind. It’s all of these things together that can form our prayer life. Each one builds on the other, but each one remains.
Like I said at the beginning, this is the fruit of my own prayer, my own relationship with the Lord, and I hope something in here speaks to you. I hope something here helps you on your prayer journey.
Just as my relationship with my wife is not the same as the relationship that you have with your spouse, or with your fiance, or boyfriend, or girlfriend, or the person that you’ve just met that stirs your heart – the same is true with our relationship with Jesus.
We can learn from one another, but as the novelist Steven Pressfield wrote, “It is one thing to study war, it is another to live the warrior’s life.”
It is one thing to study prayer, it is another to actually pray, so I encourage you to go do that.
PS: Want to go deeper? Here are three ways:
The Pray on Paper Club: A Catholic prayer mail club, delivered to your mailbox. Every month, a curated envelope arrives with sacred art, spiritual reading, prayers from the saints, a prayer intention from a fellow member, and much more.
The Prayer Journals: The Examination Journal and the Little Prayer Journal. Simple tools for building a habit of daily prayer through journaling and the examen.
The Victor’s Crown: If you enjoyed this (and you’re not already subscribed), start your morning with a 2-minute reflection every weekday. Free, by email or in your podcast app.