Thank you, Deacon Geoff Bennett, for inviting me on Denver’s Respect Life Radio to talk about “The Prayer Book for Tired Parents!”
You can listen to the full interview here. We talked about all sorts of things parents can relate to – first, being tired (that goes without saying, right?). We also talked about the unique struggles parents face in family life, and offered encouragement to parents who are struggling to keeping their heads above water.
In today’s world, there’s no room to be mediocre Catholics. We have to be all in. That’s not meant to be scary, but a call to arms for parents – we’ve got to take our faith more seriously!
The reality is, if we’re not consciously growing in holiness from day to day, our souls are dying. If we’re not making a plan for how we are going to spend our time and how we’re going to deepen our relationship with God, if we’re not trying, that relationship will suffer.
We can apply what we know and feel about marriage to our relationship with God – is it enough to just say, “Honey, you know I love you. Can we just leave it at that and do our own thing?” NO!
Imagine if our spouse ignored us, except for times they ask for special favors.
Imagine if we only spent time around them out of obligation on special occasions – like Christmas and Easter?
Imagine if we griped and groaned every time they wanted to have conversations with us – asking about our day – wondering about our dreams – caring about our needs?
Imagine if we regularly blew off date nights to watch football games.
THAT SOUNDS LIKE A TERRIBLE MARRIAGE!
How many of us treat God this way?
In the midst of parenting early on, Dave and I realized we made tons of excuses for why we couldn’t pay more attention to God:
- “We don’t have time to pray the Rosary because we need to get the kids to bed.”
- “There’s no way we can take the kids to daily Mass because they won’t pay attention anyway and it will eat up our whole evening.”
- “I just can’t get up early to go to Mass.”
- “We don’t have time to go to adoration because there’s too much to do at home.”
- “It’s too hard to get to confession on Saturdays because it’s an awkward time and out of the way.”
- “What parent could do a holy hour every week?”
- “Spiritual reading is not possible at this point in our lives.”
The problem with these excuses is that they’re not true. What we lacked was not time or energy, but love. Surely, we make time for the things that are important to us – the things we love. And surely, if we want to accomplish something difficult, we’re creative enough to find a way.
We elaborate on this in “The Prayer Book for Tired Parents,” which I hope you’ll get, because you’ll start to see too the many excuses that pull us away from God, the things that hurt our relationship with Him.
If your spiritual life is stagnant, or shriveling, “The Prayer Book for Tired Parents” is written for you!
