THE CHAPLET OF DIVINE MERCY

For many years I have been able to have a very generous chunk of prayer time each morning. During that time I have prayed, attempeted meditation and studied topics that I felt called to examine in order to strengthen my faith and better know God. Even after the birth of my second little one, I made sure to structure my day so that I could start it with prayer.


Now, life has changed and I find I am unable to have my morning prayer time right now. I have started working several nights a week at a book store. I love this job for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons is that I am such a valued employee they will give me whatever schedule I want. So I am able to go to work around 6:00 almost every shift. This means that I can get my children ready for bed and since they go to bed early, sometimes even put them down for sleep before I leave. It also means that we do no have to hire as sitter, Monkey either comes home early or at the same time he would normally. It is a huge gift.


It is also a challenge. I never leave work earlier than 10:30p.m. We live close by so sometimes I am home before 11:00p.m. but ususally not since there is a teenage girl who closes with me almost every night that I feel obligated to drive home. She lives about 10 minutes west of us and really, would you want your teenage daughter on the bus at that time of night? No of course not. So I drive her home partially out of this sense of duty, but also in obligation and gratitude for all the people who gave me rides for the many years that I did not drive or have a vehicle.


All that to say, I cannot get up and pray at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning when I do not get to sleep sometimes until midnight or later. I have to dash into the shower at 6:00 as it is in order to bathe before the tots are up and the Monkey gets their breakfast. But the years have taught me that daily prayer is essential and so I am training myself to use the children's nap time as a prayer time. I am less focused and need a little help, so I am using the blog for writing and I have been using EWTN for help with prayer and meditation.


Every day at noon they have a prayer called The Chaplet of Divine Mercy, that this new Catholic had never experienced. It is a lot like the rosary, but simpler and frankly a little quicker. It uses the rosary though, so I get the meditative benefits that the rosary brings me. And it is a prayer to Jesus directly, an area of my faith that has been weak. I have no problem praying to God or even to Mary, or even some of the saints. But coming from the Bible belt of fundamentalism left a mark on me that seperated me for too long from God and has continued to plague me in my relationship with Jesus. Saying this prayer is beginning to heal that relationship. It is softening the edges of my resistance to Him and allowing me to hear him occaisionally as He graciously and patiently continues to connect with me.


Gerald May, in his book "The Dark Night of the Soul" best summarizes my reaction to all this.

"...I must confess that I am no longer very good at telling the difference between good things and bad things...from the standpoint of inner individual experience the distinction has become blurred for me. Some things start out looking great but wind up terribly, while other things seem bad in the beginning but turn out to be blessings in disguise...At some point I gave up trying to decide what's ultimately good or bad. I truly do not know."


Exactly. Who knew that not being able to pray at one's usual time would lead to a greater connection with Jesus? So much mystery....