Last year Cowboy and I received the book Couples Who Pray (also where the term “God-wink” entered our vocabulary) as a (Valentine’s?) gift from my parents. We read through the book, and committed to praying together as a couple, for 40 days, as recommended by the authors. At the end of the 40 days we continued on strong with our daily habit for several months. Then somewhere along the way we started to miss a day or two, often because one or both of us would fall asleep in the midst of praying. And before we knew it, our husband-and-wife prayer time was a distant memory.
Sometime before Christmas my wonderful Cowboy joined forces with my mom to create a set of prayer kneeling benches for us so that we could renew our daily prayers without the temptation of falling asleep. He was in charge of wood, and my my was in charge of the cushions.
The Christmas deadline came and went, and much to Cowboy’s amusement, I brought up the subject of renewing our prayer time once or twice without a clue that he had such a thoughtful plan in the works.
Shortly before Valentine’s Day I was allowed to open the finished cushions and not long after, Cowboy finished his part of the project. My mom had lovingly crafted matching prayer bench cushions out of scraps left over from my wedding dress, Bug’s flower girl dress, my sister-in-law’s maid of honor dress, and the dress my mom wore to our wedding. (Yes, there was a lot of sewing going on before our wedding!)
We don’t need special benches to pray together, but each time I see them sitting at the foot of our bed, I think of the love that went into making this special gift and I am more determined than ever to make prayer a central part of our marriage.
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Joining the community of gratitude on Mondays at A Holy Experience . . .
#25 A fresh start
#24 A husband who remembers
#23 New birds arriving at the feeders
#22 Green buds swollen with promise
#21 Safe returns home
Your prayer benches are beautiful! I love how the cushions were made from the fabric of your wedding dress and other wedding-day dresses. How very, very special!
ReplyDeleteI’m visiting from Ann’s today. I know it’s Tuesday and the link was yesterday. But there are 300 of us linking – I’ll be reading all week and still won’t get to them all. So I’m glad I got to yours.
ReplyDeleteFirst, wow – that bench – just wow. I can’t think of a better guarantee of a lon long marriage than a husband and bride praying together.
And I do have one favorite from your list. - #23 New birds arriving at the feeders (but just the little chirpy ones, and some of the little bigger ones – but not the big black ones – don’t like those – or bluejays – they can me mean – my cat loves them all :)
Thank you for sharing your list – it’s really a joy reading all of these.
God Bless you and yours and your gratitude journey.
How very special!
ReplyDelete