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everyday parenting as spiritual practice

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how to pray with baby: up all night

8 Comments

Continuing with the practical side of spiritual practices with newborns, here is the 2nd in this series of simple ways to pray while caring for a baby: all day long, up all night, in fussy moments, and in peaceful moments. 

. . .

wakingWaking up at night

To pray:

I rise before dawn and cry for help;
I put my hope in your words.
My eyes are awake before each watch of the night,
that I may meditate on your promise.

Psalm 119: 147-148

To practice:

Next time you are up with baby at 2:00 am (or 3:00 am, or 4:00 am – or all 3!), think of all those who are also awake at this late hour: employees working the third shift, tired parents tending to sick children, monks and nuns praying the hours.

Pray in solidarity with those who work while others sleep. Pray in thanksgiving to God who is always present, watchful and waiting.

. . .

Rocking

To pray:

… I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.

Psalm 131:2rocking

To practice:

As you rock back and forth with your baby, let the rhythm set the pace for your prayer.

Meditate on a two-part prayer that matches your movement forward and back.

A-men. Je-sus. Yah-weh.

Or choose the four-part cadence of the ancient Jesus Prayer:

Jesus Christ / Son of God / Have mercy on me / A sinner.

As you connect with your rhythm and breath and baby, let yourself be lulled and comforted as you quiet your own soul within you.

. . .

Swaddling

To pray:

And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

Luke 2:7

To practice:

Whenever you wrap your baby in soft blankets to keep her warm or tight swaddlers to help him sleep, think of Mary wrapping her newborn child in love and warmth. Ask for Mary’s guidance to love, protect, and care for your child.

swaddling

. . .

Singing

To pray:

But I will sing of your might;
   I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning.
For you have been a fortress for me
   and a refuge on the day of my distress. 
O my strength, I will sing praises to you,
   for you, O God, are my fortress,
   the God who shows me steadfast love.

Psalm 59: 16-17singing


To practice:

When you sing to your baby, think of someone who sang favorite lullabies to you as a child: a parent, grandparent, older sibling or baby sitter.

Hold their love in mind as you repeat verse after verse. Give thanks to God for the small, simple ways we share love with each other.

And when you run out of ideas for songs to keep you awake while you help baby fall asleep, try a church hymn – an old classic from growing up or a new favorite from today.

Add your voice to the church’s song of praise to God, who is faithful in the morning, all day, and at night.

. . .

Tune in next time: how to pray with baby – in fussy moments!

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Comments

  1. Fran says

    1 August 2014 at 4:28 pm

    Laura, I am a grandmother encountering these moments again after many years. Thank you for so beautifully integrating a blessed but very busy time of life with our ever unfolding spiritual journey. I am so pleased to have your thoughts to share with my daughter who is also touched by them. Thank you for being this voice for young mothers.

    Reply
    • Laura says

      2 August 2014 at 7:23 am

      Thank you, Fran! I am so grateful that these have touched you and that you’ve been able to pass them on. It’s an affirmation to know that they resonate with you in another stage of life, too!

      Reply
  2. Cheryl says

    30 January 2021 at 4:26 pm

    My Grandson is 8 months old and my daughter has not slept since he was born. I want to help her but she thinks I’m judging her. I pray every night and day to bring peace to both Kim my daughter and Jackson my
    Grandson.
    Please give me some advice and pray for us.
    God bless
    Cheryl Kramer

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. how to pray with baby: for fussy moments « mothering spirit says:
    4 August 2014 at 6:01 am

    […] more mindful with a new baby in your life? Check out two more ways to pray – all day long and up all night – and the complete series on spiritual practices with […]

    Reply
  2. how to pray with baby: in peaceful moments « mothering spirit says:
    6 August 2014 at 6:38 am

    […] last in the series on how to pray with baby: all day long, up all night, in fussy moments, and in peaceful […]

    Reply
  3. spiritual practices with newborns: a new series « mothering spirit says:
    1 September 2014 at 4:21 pm

    […] up all night […]

    Reply
  4. the theology of tired (and a prayer for the sleep-deprived) - Mothering Spirit says:
    7 August 2015 at 4:01 pm

    […] since 2009 I have been weary to my bones. This is the happy side effect of answered prayers and three […]

    Reply
  5. The Theology of Tired (and a prayer for the sleep-deprived) | The Catholic Wife says:
    26 August 2015 at 11:45 am

    […] since 2009 I have been weary to my bones. This is the happy side effect of answered prayers and three […]

    Reply

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About Laura

I’m Laura Kelly Fanucci. Mother, writer, wonderer. This space is where I explore mothering through writing. It’s where I celebrate how God shows up in the chaos of raising children. It’s where I love to build community with readers like you. Read More…

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Watch me try not to laugh while my kids are scream Watch me try not to laugh while my kids are screaming upstairs at my spouse while I muse on motherhood & creativity 😝

Check out @grottonetwork for thoughtful reflections on relationships, work, faith, and life’s big questions. And let yourself thank someone this week for the creative work of nurturing new life in you!
Pilgrimage update! I shared in my last newsletter Pilgrimage update! I shared in my last newsletter that we were able to add Chartres & Mont-St-Michel to our itinerary, plus an extra day in Paris. Three of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, so I can’t wait to pray there with you on pilgrimage in October. Check out my bio for details.

Want to hear more about the trip? Join me on Friday, May 6th, at 1:30 pm CT for an Instagram Live with Claire Swinarski - founder of @thecatholicfeminist & leader of last year’s pilgrimage to France with @selectinternationaltours 

Claire will share her experience on pilgrimage, her favorite places in France, & her wisdom for anyone thinking about joining us this fall. 

Have you ever been to France? Or made a pilgrimage? I’d love to hear your favorites!

#pilgrimage #travelwithselect #holyplaces #travel2022 #france #thesacredway2022
For years these words hung on the wall of my offic For years these words hung on the wall of my office. A reminder to behold the beauty in the ordinary.

I took them down after grief tore apart my world. Normal days, what a joke.

But years later I pulled the words out again. Turned out they were true, of course.

I had always caught my breath at the line about war, barely able to imagine longing for boring days from bloody battlefields.

Today I keep the wise words before my eyes again, as a way to keep praying for Ukraine.

For all the places where war or violence make for (ab)normal days.

May the common rock of any ordinary day we’re given remind us to remember all whose earth is upheaved right now.
The sun came out for the first time in days (weeks The sun came out for the first time in days (weeks? gloomy where you are, too?).

So I followed every ladybug in the bedroom to the window, closed my eyes and sunned my face. I could have curled up like a cat for hours. But the sun slipped back, retreating behind the grey wall as quickly as it came.

May today hold a gentle reminder to turn wherever you find the light, to let it warm and delight you. The spiritual practice of sunning ourselves (for a whole holy second!) is not trite or toxic: we are creatures who crave what is good and this is not wrong.

If you linger there for a moment, to remember God and grace and any good gift that has been poured out upon you, unasked or undeserved, you can return for a flash to the Source of your Being.

All the Psalms about the sun sing the same. We were made for the Great Light.
I spent years wondering about the opposite of grie I spent years wondering about the opposite of grief.

Would it be joy? To hold happiness again, to have tears turned into dancing?

Would it be gain? To find what was lost? To have arms full again around the ones I love?

Would it be peace? To breathe into the space of calm? To soak up healing as balm?

This morning I rose and realized: the opposite of grief is Easter.

Joy, gain, peace, hope, love, healing—all of it rolled into one and heaps more besides.

You know that awful feeling in grief’s first weeks, after someone you love has died, when you rise and remember yourself back into reality, and the grief-pain of loss washes over you again? The terrible turning moments that torpedo the day.

Easter Monday was the first morning that humans got to experience the utter opposite.

The undoing of what seemed undone. The resurrection of what looked impossible to restore.

The flip side of every grief and loss.

This morning I pictured the women rising again on Monday, the first ones to find and preach the Resurrection.

What joy & delight & hope & astonishment must have washed across their faces in their first few moments after waking, as they remembered themselves back into a world made new.

This is what every single one of us has yearned for, in the impossible imagination after loss. What if I could wake up and they would be back here again?

Exactly what all who loved him found when they woke up on Monday morning.

Now we only taste it, glimpse it, grasp it for a moment—but one day it will rise for us and never leave.

The opposite of grief is here.
To see others in pain while you are in pain— To To see others in pain
while you are in pain—
To reach out to the grieving
while others are grieving for you—
To lift up the least
while you are the greatest—
To speak to the suffering of women
while your own body is suffering—
To stop for others
while you walk the hardest road—

Until now I never noticed how much it meant that Jesus stopped for the women of Jerusalem.

He stops for the women of Ukraine, the women of Juarez, the women of Afghanistan, women everywhere who suffer and grieve and mourn.
 
He stops for them and for us. He tells us not to weep for him but to weep for this world, not to despair of the present but to steel ourselves for the future, not to lament unless we are willing to change.

What is he calling me to grieve? How is he calling me to change?

What might he see in us—our lives, our sorrows, our griefs, even our bodies—that we have not let ourselves lament?
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