06/15/2026
I don’t know what prayer is like for you.
Prayer for me can be different from day to day—or from season to season.
This is good, I think. Prayer is meant to be this way—something living and dynamic. It’s the fruit of a long-term relationship, like conversations with an old friend. It’s not always the same. Nor should it be.
I find, however, that like old friendships, there are habits in prayer.
One form prayer takes for me doesn’t look a lot like a form at all. There’s no set schedule to it. It happens as needs arise. Or grace tugs.
This prayer is just me, sitting, usually holding a rosary in my hands. I may use words, like saying the prayers of the rosary. Or I may not. I have found that words are not always necessary for prayer.
But holding my rosary, feeling my way through its loops and beads, reminds me that there’s been a change of scene. Whatever I was doing before, I am no longer doing. Now I am praying.
It’s as if stopping, sitting, and holding the rosary is enough to say to my brain, to my body, and to my heart that I have entered a holy place. My rosary is almost like a fidget spinner. It’s tactile sensation grounds me, brings me closer to my heart.
Here’s the best way I know to describe this kind of prayer for me: it’s like feeling something laying upon your heart and simply taking it to God. Saying not by words so much as by stopping and praying, ‘Here, God, this belongs to you. I don’t know my way through this, but you do. So I’m giving it to you. And I’m trusting you’ll lead us through.’
Maybe I feel troubled. Or puzzled. Or uncertain. Or in need of comfort. I sit with whatever it is, and invite God to sit with me in it.
Before long, whatever I felt, whatever prompted me to stop and pull out my rosary, whatever moved me to lift my heart to God, it feels like God is holding it more than I am.
For all the many ways to pray, sometimes prayer can be just that simple.
Like sitting with an old friend.
Reflection by Chad Hyatt
Art by Sid Imes
Rosary by Chad Hyatt
