We all can experience a rut in our prayer lives, and Father Dave welcomes Lisa Hendey to discuss how we can invite Christ into our everyday moments. Lisa is the founder of CatholicMom.com and her new book is called “Jesus Every Day, Jesus Every Way: A Weekly Devotional.”
She discusses the book’s reflections for all 52 weeks of the year. “It gives you a theme for the week, and looks at a little bit of Scripture and how that relates to everyday life,” she says. “Throughout the week, I sprinkled in quotes that are sometimes from Scripture, but mostly from things like literature and poetry, and every Friday the quote is from a movie. It was a really fun project to actually go through and contemplate what relates to this [topic] that I’m talking about when I’m reflecting on a Scripture passage.”
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Lisa explains the recent changes she has made to her own prayer life. “I’m a 62-year-old woman, and in the last five years I’ve been through COVID, the death of both of my parents within 10 months of each other, and stage three breast cancer,” she says. “I’m so lucky to have been Catholic my entire life, and with a very vibrant faith life and a great community around me. But I think there are times in our lives where I find myself sort of going through the motions. I never really stopped praying, but am I sort of doing prayer as opposed to really being in relationship with God?”
“That’s where I was in my prayer journey when this project presented itself to me, and the opportunity really gave me pause. Initially, I said, ‘No thank you,’ because I’m not worthy of writing a book like that,” Lisa continues. “After giving it some thought and discernment, I decided this will be a good project for me, because it will force me to reassess where I am in my prayer journey. It really did, and I find myself, a year later, just in a really beautiful place.”
They discuss how Lectio Divina plays a role in her prayer life. “In Lectio Divina, or sacred reading, the first step is to withdraw or go away to a quiet place. If you’ve ever seen any of my social media, maybe you’ve seen my ball chair. I have one of those really groovy egg chairs, and that’s my place that I withdraw to in my morning prayer time,” Lisa says, and describes how the next steps are to read and place yourself into Scripture.
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“For me, the last part was often the stage that I was missing: to make the connection between all those stages [of Lectio Divina] and then re-entering the world — getting out of the ball chair going on with my day,” Lisa continues, noting that she would print excerpts of Scripture to carry with her and reread throughout her daily errands and tasks.
“What I really wanted to do was look at the encounter of what we read in Scripture, versus the rest of my life. [Most] days and hours, I’m not sitting in church or in my prayer corner…so where do I find Jesus in all of those places on all those other days of the week?”
