I'm not sure why it happened, actually. Maybe it was all of the Christmas music that was available on the radio... Maybe it was the desire to jump on the phone and check in with friends I haven't talked to in a while. Whatever the case, for the first time in a couple of years, I went several days without even praying a full decade of the Rosary.
Now, the Rosary and I have not always had a simpatico relationship. I've always wanted to pray it. Check that. I've always wanted to want to pray it, but for years and years, each and every time I powered through and prayed a whole rosary it has taken a massive amount of effort to overcome my own will and get it done.
I convinced myself for a while that I didn't need to pray it if it just stressed me out and piled guilt on my head. It is a private devotion, after all. You don't have to pray it to get in to heaven. Looking back, it is probably a good idea that I stopped fighting myself and took a break. I still wanted to want to pray it, but I didn't give myself such a hard time when I didn't get it done for a while.
Fast forward several years. Somehow, little by little, the Rosary did begin to take a larger role in my spiritual life. The half-Rosaries that we prayed as a family on the way to Mass led to the habit of praying however much I could get done each time I got in the car. I joined a "Rosary of Moms" and committed to praying a decade for particular mystery of Jesus' life each month with the moms. Miraculously (for me), I found myself praying more than a single five-decade rosary most days.
To be honest, though, I didn't notice much of a difference in myself. I don't know what I thought would happen if I prayed more, but I was fairly certain I would notice something. Maybe it would be a particular grace right when I needed it, or an extra dose of patience, or a super-Mandie ability to get out of bed with my alarm in the morning. Something. I wish I could sit here and tell you that when I made a habit of praying the Rosary daily, I noticed a real change in my life. But I didn't. I still felt like the same old me, struggling to get through each day without messing it up. If God really was acting more deeply in my life, it was unbeknownst to me.
Then came the experiment.
Like I said, I didn't mean to skip several days in a row, but I will tell you, I DID notice something then. And it wasn't a good something.
I found myself at odds with people in my life that I'd formerly patched things over with. I had a sore throat from all the yelling at the kids for the mess that their rooms had become. I was brooding over injury, worried about the future, and angry at situations that hadn't bothered me in ages. I was a hot mess.
A few other times that I missed praying the Rosary, I remember having a bad day here and there. I'd already noticed that when I've missed Mass on Sunday due to sickness or taking care of a sick child, I am far less desirable as a companion that week. Through my inadvertent experiment of missing several days in a row, I now realized just how much my daily relationship with the Blessed Mother, the mysteries of her Son's life, and those beads had changed me.
Father Tom Hagan spoke at the Christ Our Life conference last September about how the the Rosary and the Mass are not just nice devotions to him anymore, he clings to them for dear life. I can't speak of it any other way than to say that this experiment revealed to me that I've become dependent on prayer to get me through the day. I've built a house of cards, so to speak. Who I am now is related so concretely to how I pray, that I am a blubbering, falling-down mess when I miss it.
Even though I still don't usually feel anything when I pray (other than guilt for not being meditative enough to feel anything), I have come to the point that I don't pray to feel things. I learned a long time ago that you can't tell the difference prayer (or Mass attendance) makes in your life based on how you feel WHILE you are doing it: it's how you feel AFTER you do it that counts.
While I would not recommend my experiment to anyone, I will say that it taught me a life-changing lesson about the gentle and sometimes undetected changes that happen when you begin to give your life more fully over to God in prayer. He will work powerfully in our lives if we just give him the time and opportunity, whether we realize it or not.
"And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it." Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude
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