12/14/2023
How beautiful to know you are not alone, especially in those midnight moments ❤️
This weekend I had the delight of getting to pray at the Norbertine Sisters on a little self led prayer retreat. What you can’t see in this picture is the 40ish sisters that live in a cloister on the other side of the stone wall. Their voices are angelic and their prayers fervent.
Attending their prayers throughout the day kept me busy- I was in awe of how frequennnt all their prayers were. But half way through the weekend I saw one prayer listed that wasn’t on my initial schedule.
Matins, 12 am.
12 am…. Is that right?!
There was a sister who was allowed out of the silence of the cloister to be my point person. She left me a picnic basket of food for each meal and showed me which prayers to read during lauds, vespers and everything in between.
I caught her eye during a meal with a question... “Sister, do you all pray every evening in the middle of the night?”
“Yes, that prayer is long- for an hour. That is when we intercede for moms. It is our motherhood hour, where we get up with you.”
She left and tears poured down my cheeks. All those nights where I felt so alone, so tired and withered… these sisters had been there awake with me. So many nights I was too exhausted to pray, too tired just trying to feed newborns and ravenous toddlers. You know those stream of nights back to back where you are begging God for just one straight rem cycle? Exhaustion gnaws at your bones with such fervor and hormones and emotions are flying like grease in a hot pan.
They were with me and I never knew it, hidden away in their quiet heroic way interceding.
It changed something in me. Motherhood has been particularly tiresome for me lately. I have had to continuously beg Jesus, “Jesus, help me be holy…” on the most basic mundane tasks. Laundry and dishes seem so painful and dreadful and awful. Frustration and impatience snaps out of me like lightning zapping whoever pokes me first. I am a mouse trap- snapping at whoever tiptoes by.
I am not alone. You are not alone. There are sisters awake in the night praying for you in your tiredness. They are awake with you in it all. They are praying for you, even in their own exhaustion, because they know you need an intercessor.😭
