Praying for You!

We have a houseful right now - myself and my husband and five of our six children plus two dogs all under one roof doing our work and studying as best we can. It's really not too bad since we're all fairly grown up and rather used to a large family and learning at home. The main thing that's getting a bit overstretched is the Internet, which we are working on upgrading.

In trying to make good use of our space and this strange and unexpected opportunity to spend so much time together, I set aside two important surfaces in our home that we are reserving for only one purpose each.

I should preface this by saying that this is not necessarily something we're good at. Usually everyone is quite busy with their various jobs and sports and such and comes home and dumps stuff on the table and all happily eat, often together, in front of the television. But what I am implementing and I hope and believe we can pull off, is to sit down and eat dinner together every night and spend some time in prayer together as we are able.

For that reason, we are not working at nor dumping things on either our dining room table (not pictured) or this wonderful coffee table in our living room that we are setting aside as a prayer table.

I wanted to share a few things with you about this prayer table in particular. I brought my statue of Mary home from the office since we didn't have a good focal point for a prayer space at home. My young friends from Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (and even some of the second graders, I think) may be happy to notice that I also brought our beautiful plants from the atrium home to keep Our Lady company and to make sure the plants get taken care of while the school is so empty.

Also, I brought our Child Formation Office prayer book home to rest on our prayer table. Today I copied the names of all of our Child Formation students (and I will be doing the same soon for our school students that we work with in the atrium) into that book so that we can pray for them and their families each day.

I (and the whole family) really enjoy hearing from you during this time. I treasure the fun chats and exchanges of photos and ideas I've had with some of you. I (and all the staff at St. Charles) am eager to find good ways to stay connected. Feel free to leave a comment on any of the posts here or email me at avanhecke@stcharleshartland.org with any questions, prayer requests or suggestions you may have for this space. I'd be happy to add any of your prayer requests to the prayer book.