Morning Prayer

“I feel satisfied that there is no adequate substitute for the morning and evening practice of kneeling together—father, mother, and children. This more than lovely draperies, more than cleverly balanced color schemes, is the thing that will make for better and more beautiful homes. -President Gordon B. Hinckley, 1993

Morning Prayer is when everyone in the house rolls out of bed, sleep walks their way to Mom and Dad’s bedroom, and kneel around their bed. Rosalie points out that this tradition is relatively new, it started when Brother J moved out. This is probably our newest family tradition. Rosalie remembers being the family alarm clock, if she slept in then no one woke up, including Dad, he would be late to work and everyone else would be late to school. But no matter how late she was running there would still be morning prayers, even if it meant that everyone missed the bus and was late. This position is now Brother N's and he has moved on to being the family alarm clock. On Tuesdays, when he is at the temple the rest of us get to peacefully sleep in until someone awakes with a start and realizes how late it really is. Mom thinks that the only person who doesn’t sleep through this tradition is the person praying, but some how she still thinks it has made us closer as a family and it draws us closer to Heavenly Father. It must be working: Brother D says that he thinks morning prayer is good because he learned to talk with God, in morning prayers. Morning prayers makes a typical morning run as follows: Someone makes the rounds and wakes up everyone in the house, and then everyone with their eyes half closed makes their way to Mom and Dad’s bedroom, we all kneel around their bed except Brother B, who kneels in the door way. Brother B and Brother D both sleep in their underwear and thus come to family prayer wrapped in blankets so to shield themselves from the rest of the family. After prayer, who ever woke everyone up typically leaves for school or work, and the rest of the family disperses either to take a shower, eat breakfast or back to bed to catch a couple more ZZZ’s before they really have to get up. Family prayer in the morning isn’t nearly as much of a social bonding time as at night, because everyone is always half way asleep. I suppose this might change if we weren’t all such night animals and stay up into the wee hours of the morning talking to each other. I think that this is Daddio’s least favorite tradition (staying up into the wee hours of the morning talking that is). It either takes his wife away from him because she is up talking with us and he is in bed, or it keeps him from sleeping because he decides to join us in our midnight talks. We as a family have got to talk more with each other then any other family I know. I love this. I know that I can talk about anything with any of my brothers and sister and trust them.