Praying With Children At Night: the Examen

I see the moon, and the moon sees me...

The day is drawing to a close.  It's time to get ready for bed and prepare for tomorrow.  Practically speaking, this means brushing teeth, putting on PJs, and packing the backpack for another big, big day.  But what about our day with God?  How do we wind down the day with God and prepare for tomorrow -- and help our children to do this too?

Enter Ignatian spirituality, a branch of Catholic spirituality that prays through the events of the day.  I wrote a blog post on praying the Examen as an adult in the winter, but didn't mention a way to pray this way with children.  Well, now you can.

With the help of this blog post on praying with 12-year olds, I developed a worksheet to help children and adults to pray.  Below is a five-step prayer:

1. Start with a period of relaxation.  Throughout the day events and choices can overwhelm and pull at us.  Not even children are immune from tension.  This period of calmness allows us to ask the Holy Spirit to inspire us in our prayer.
2. With the strength of the Spirit, we work our way through the day, from beginning to the present moment, and list at least three things that we're thankful for.  Big or small; meaningful or seemingly irrelevant; whatever you're thankful for write them down.
3. Again, working back through the day, we think about what happened.  What sort of feelings or emotions came to us today?  When did these occur?
4. From this list, we focus on one item and ask God to teach us.  Spend a few moments in conversation with God, then complete the sentence "Maybe the message is/Maybe God is trying to tell me..."
5. Finally, we ask God to help us learn from our day today and live a better tomorrow.  Complete the prayer, "God, please help me to..."

The worksheet is embedded below.  The top half of the contains the guidance for praying the examen while the bottom half can be filled out as you pray.  A PDF version of this form can be downloaded by clicking here and pressing Ctrl + S.


May God be with you and your family as you pray your nightly prayers!

Photo Credit: Patricia Kashtock on flickr