Raising Saints
Raising children has been both the greatest challenge and the greatest blessing in my life so far. Our goal in life is full communion with God. Because of that, one of our responsibilities is to help bring others with us into that communion. For parents, the most obvious people we are called to lead there are our children. That is a beautiful calling, but it is also a weighty one.
Prayer Table Stage 1
The beginning stages of our prayer table. The rest shall come in time
I want to start by saying that I do not have all the answers, nor am I sure yet that my process will work. As a mom of three, I am finding this to be quite a challenge, and they are not even teenagers yet. I am not in charge. God is. So many of my days are spent asking Him for patience, wisdom, and grace, because these three can certainly bring a lot of chaos into my life. Still, I know my role is to keep placing Him before them and to keep trying to build a home that points them toward Him.
Recently, we were able to add a prayer table to our home. Instead of the old shelf I had filled with a crazy mess of rosaries, prayer cards, and Bibles, it is finally coming together into something more peaceful. Since putting it up, I have had the joy of watching my children come to the table more often to look through the Bible. I also get to overhear the little conversations they seem to be having there.
My three-year-old’s favorite thing to do, though, seems to be telling the story of God. It is sweet listening to her retell the stories she has been hearing at bedtime from my husband’s old children’s Bible. She also talks to God about how her day is going, including how her sister got into trouble. Oh, the words of children.
Besides our newly created prayer table, we also have a variety of faith-based books about the saints on their bookshelves. My son has been getting into the God’s Superheroes series, and I love listening to the games he creates afterward, pretending to be the saints he has read about.
When I think about raising saints, I do not mean that I expect perfection from my children or from myself. I mean that I want to keep guiding them, little by little, toward communion with God. Right now that looks like prayer tables, Bible stories, saint books, and small conversations. It is simple, imperfect, and still in progress, but it is a start.
P.S. As I continue adding to our prayer table, I will share more on my socials so you can see it too.
