Sleep has been a capricious friend to me. There are nights when we are thick as thieves, and others where sleep deserts me and I lie awake for hours. Over the years I have tried different tactics; including praying the Rosary. Many people say that the Rosary is a sure fire sedative… not for me! I manage to get through whole Rosaries, and then some!

So about 10 years ago, I prayed to give over to this topsy turvy state of nocturnal plagaries and simply began to pray that the Lord would grant me the sleep that I needed. For example, recently, I only had 3 hours of sleep with a very big day to follow. I texted a friend in the morning to ask her to pray. She said she would pray, “the loaves and the fishes; that the 3 would become nine”. And indeed it did!

So sleep and the Rosary? Well, when saying the Rosary didn’t work as a sedative, I decided that I must thank God that I was awake and could pray it for the salvation of souls and for the various needs of those close to me. It became a night time vigil, something that I could willingly give. The sacrifice of sleep became an opportunity to grow in the appreciation of the Rosary, and the consolation given by simple repetition.

This became my practice. So much so, that during one of my family’s ten moves, a priest friend of ours was helping my husband dismantle our bed. When they lifted the mattress off the base, they discovered about four sets of Rosary beads that had slipped down at the back of the mattress. He was delighted! He said, “I love Catholic couples!”

In spite of years of vigils, love of the Rosary continues to remain somewhat elusive to me. I hear people say, “Oh, I love the Rosary!” In my mind I think, “how lucky!” I don’t love it, I don’t exude affection for the prayer, but I have grown to understand that saying the Rosary each day is an act of willing obedience. I love this word, obedience. It alarms our modern,  “self actualising” sensibilities; we start twitching, fidgeting, fussing.

I grew up saying the Rosary around the table after dinner. I am grateful because it taught me all the prayers and it taught me diligence. But I wasn’t happy about it. I loathed it! I felt embarrassed when we had guests, I felt my freedom being transgressed as I crossed the murky threshold into teenage years. I did not fall in love with it. In fact, familiarity did breed some contempt.

I became sassy and pushed my beads to the back of my drawer and the back of my mind. It was part of my rebellion, my, “don’t tell me what to do” moment. Even when I came fully to my faith in my late twenties, I still did not love the Rosary! When someone suggested saying it, I felt this surge of churlishness and sudden fatigue. Then one day, my brother visited me as a newly minted Protestant and said how wonderful that he was not obliged to say repetitive prayers like the Rosary; that it was not necessary…and he then said, “Praise you, Jesus” for the twentieth time. I was struck by the irony and I was struck by my internal response to this “good news”.

I was offended that he felt so free to diss my faith! By this time, I was a fully fledged  member of the Emmanuel Community, raising my hands to praise the Lord with great delight. It caused me to challenge my truculent reactions to the Rosary and to recognise that response as an old neural pathway that I didn’t need to obey any more. I started to think about obedience and why it was a good thing. I started to think of saying the Rosary as a form of exercise, as a form of nourishment that was good for me. Toddlers often don’t wish to have a nap, bathe and eat their veggies, but we make them because we know it is good for them. Saying the Rosary falls into this category for me. I have to treat myself as a toddler and trust that saying the prayer will not only be good for me, but vital for the world!

And it is.

It is powerful.

It is given to us by the Church.

Our Lady is the disciple; she asks us to pray it.

The Saviour of the world came via the obedience of Mary

So what’s not to love?

For love does not require my affectivity, simply my willingness to desire the good.

The Rosary is the building of spiritual muscle…and I do really desire to have an Arnie Schwarzanegger style spiritual physique! So I will continue to pray the Rosary and even hope that one day I will fall in love with it!

~ Sarah McDonald

Sarah is married to James. They are blessed with four children, whom Sarah has homeschooled for the past nine years. Sarah gained a degree in Education, had a cerebral hemorrhage and returned to study Chinese Medicine and shiatsu therapy. By her account, she wasted her 20s gallivanting around the world before experiencing a conversion in Paris at the 1997 World Youth Day.

Sarah worked for a time for the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne in their Vocations office, and met and married James. An unexpected move to Sydney kicked off a career as a homeschooler. Her particular educational interests are proper grammar and the transmission of a lively Catholic faith. She & James have been members of the Emmanuel Community for 20 years.