Laying the Foundation of Spiritaual Practices

I distinctly remember having a conversation with my husband when our children were very young and I was a stay-at-home mother. I said, “I don’t get a yearly review and I definitely don’t get a raise, so it won’t be until they have grown and flown that I will know whether I have done a good job”. In many ways, that has been true. Thankfully, there have also been glimpses over the years that we were on the right track. 

 As a young mother to four children in just over four and a half years, when bedtime came around, I was more than ready to bid them goodnight. We followed a very organized routine every night.

First, we sat on the floor, and the children took turns choosing the bedtime book—one book. I read to them a lot during the day, so that assuaged my guilt of being strict at bedtime. We then said our family prayers, which included each child saying one thing they were thankful for that day and one thing about which they were sorry. There was no punishment for whatever I learned during this time, sometimes we did have a follow-up conversation. After the gratitude and confession time, we prayed “Now I lay me down to sleep” followed by our God blesses—and those could go on for quite a while.

Being a family and doing family things together was important to my husband and me. We wanted them to know that sharing our highs and lows could bring them closer and establish a sibling bond we prayed would endure for the entirety of their lives. We also wanted them to know they were individuals. 

Thus, following family prayers, I took time tucking each into his or her bed, leaned over and whispered words from Luke 2:52, “Dear God, help (Sarah Katherine, Christopher, William, Caroline) grow strong in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and others.” I then kissed their foreheads, tucked them in like tacos, and touched each corner as I prayed, “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, bless this bed that ________lies on. Four corners on the bed, four angels round his/her head, angels there to watch him/her sleep, to rest and dream without a peep.”

Yes, I adjusted the prayer both because I didn’t love the “one to watch and one to pray and two to bear his/her soul away,” and also because it reminded them to go to sleep without a peep!

As the children grew into their preteen and teen years and homework and after-school activities ramped up, family bedtime prayers became fewer and fewer before dropping off completely. Sometimes at family dinners, we would share our highs and lows, but the nightly formal time together passed with the years. The foundation was laid, though, and there are signs that all the time we spent in prayer during their early years had an impact.

When they were teenagers I wrote a prayer from A New Zealand Prayer Book’s Night Prayer service on the top of our chalkboard wall, and often I noticed one of the children standing in front of it for a few moments at the end of the day. They shared with me when big tests were coming up or when facing problems, challenges, or fears, and I would tell them, “I’ll pray for you and light a candle.” 

The night before my son was to start high school, he crept into my room, crawled up on the bed, and asked, “Mama, do you think you could say that growing-up prayer for me?” As he left the house the next morning, he said, “Maybe you could keep that candle lit until school is over.”

Our family prayer life did not end; it evolved. Rather than tucking them in like tacos and touching the corners of their beds, these “candle prayers,” as we began calling them, became sacred and even shared with their friends. I received texts from their friends asking me to light a candle for them and sharing with me their situation. My children are now grown and flown, and I still get these texts. We also have a family text chain that is active on a daily basis. Lots of memes and jokes, but also requests for candle prayers. 

The children are now well into their 20s and have each developed their own spiritual practices. They can still recite the words from Night Prayer.