Count your blessings. Notice and give thanks when you see and know that you are living out something you have prayed.
I play chess with our youngest son. Two days now, he’s been obsessed and plays chess as he does everything else: he wants to win, and when he doesn’t—he wants to play again. In this early stage, it makes for many games.
Before bed, we read more of Huckleberry Finn. He asks questions as we read which shows he thinks on what is said, not letting words roll by while mind and thoughts are somewhere else.
We pause in the chapter.
“Do you want to say a prayer with me?” he asks.
“I do.”
He rises from bed where we read and grabs a pocket notebook. There are three prayers inside that he has copied from the walls of his Catholic class he goes to after school.
Handwritten—recorded and saved—he’s made the prayers his own.
The “Our Father,” “Hail Mary,” and “Glory Be”: he doesn’t know it yet, but he possesses now the foundation for praying the whole Rosary.
He asks about this too, handing one to me. He asks me where the prayers go, which prayer(s) to which beads.
I answer and speak, too, of mysteries that meant nothing to me at his age.
This morning, I reflect—Rosary in hand.
Count your blessings, and so I do—bead by bead until the circle is complete and I am back to its beginning.
Notice and give thanks when you see and know that you are living out something you have prayed, and so I do—those of my young son’s hand.