In the midst of being a busy parent, adding Lenten practices to your daily life can seem impractical. Today, I want to share 3 simple practices that you can incorporate into your Lent:
Dive into a prayer book specifically for TIRED parents
The Prayer Book for Tired Parents includes a plethora of prayers specifically tailored for…yup, tired parents.
Would any of these be helpful in your prayer life:
- a Prayer for Thanksgiving for Groceries,
- a Prayer for the Healing of Family Rifts,
- a Prayer for Chastity for the Entire Family,
- a Prayer for the Completion of Housework,
- a Prayer for the Person who “Sanctifies” You,
- a Prayer for Family Enduring Mental Illness,
- a Prayer in Thanksgiving for Coffee,
- a Prayer for Courage for Children,
- and so many more!
This book gives you short, specific prayers that will give you the words to pray for your family along a range of topics (both big and small).
This Lent, add this book to your bedside table as a daily resource during the long days (and nights) of parenting.
Offer up each day during Lent for a specific person
These Lenten Daily Prayer & Sacrifice Cards are a beautiful way that you can offer each day in Lent in an intentional way.
After you offer each day’s prayers and sacrifices for a specific person, send them one of these forty beautiful cards to let them know. THAT’S IT. Spend each day offering up your daily sacrifices, inconveniences, and annoyances for a specific person and then LET THEM KNOW that they are being held up in prayer.
Katie Warner shared 3 ways she was transformed by this Lenten practice:
Prayer: First, it encourages me to take the Lenten pillar of prayer even more seriously, focusing on how my prayer not only my impacts own spiritual life, but impacts the Body of Christ. I feel like my intentional prayers each day help carry the cross of some other person in my life.
Companionship: Second, it allows me to become a sort of spiritual companion to another person on their own Lenten journey, particularly by letting them know that I am interceding for him or her on that day. Oftentimes, the individual will give me specific intentions to pray for, making that day’s prayer even more meaningful.
Promises: Finally, it gives me a chance to catch up on my ‘I’ll be praying for you’ promises. It’s easy to tell people that we are praying for them, but sometimes, our prayer for them just isn’t as frequent or as deep as we would like it to be. (Other times, we forget to pray altogether!) This Lenten prayer activity changes that. You devote an entire day of spiritual focus — through prayer, but also sacrifice — to one person and their struggles, hopes, spiritual life, family relations, health, and whatever else that soul uniquely needs from you and your intercession.”
IDEA FOR SPIRITUAL COMPANIONSHIP: Forward this blog to a few friends and see if you can all do this Lenten practice together!
Embrace the sacrament of Confession
For many of us, confession is placed on the back burner during the busy schedules and trying to care for our families. Perhaps the most we have thought about confession has been when we are preparing a child for First Confession!
This Lent, commit to truly, deeply embracing the sacrament of Confession with this guide for reconciliation with God.
This slim volume:
- Includes a whopping 17-page examination of conscience–always opens my eyes and the list is written so as not to destroy the innocence of a teen while being clear to an adult (if you know what I mean)
- Details the three essential elements to a good confession
- Lists the steps of an ordinary confession (who says what when)
- Provides three Acts of Contrition you can carry with you into the confessional
And Father Kane shows you how — before you ever enter the confessional — you can awaken in yourself those attitudes of mind that will enable you to quickly identify your sins (particularly the hidden ones), grow truly sorry for them, and do your penance as God wants it done.
Better yet: he shows you how sustaining these attitudes in your soul between confessions will protect you from new sins and ward off the worry and discouragement that afflict us all.
This book can help revive the beauty of confession in your life, especially applicable during Lent.
is the Brand Manager for Holy Heroes after handling many other roles over the years. Make sure you sign up for our emails to receive more of Clara’s writing!
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