Laundry, Love, and Lent Kim Long, Saint Mary of the Pines DRE
“First of all then I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone.” 1st Timothy 2:1 IN MY EARLY DAYS as a Catholic I was not tuned in to intercessory prayer. Growing up in a Baptist household I knew virtually nothing about that form of prayer beyond the prayer chain scotch taped to my grandmother’s and mother’s refrigerator door. Mostly I was taught to take it, as the song says, to the Lord in prayer…myself. As a young girl we kept quiet about our needs and issues and problems and if we talked at all it was usually to Jesus in hurried, hopeful prayers just before sleep overtook us.
The prayer chain seemed so much out of my own realm and that of my friends; it seemed reserved for adults who 10
CATHOLIC CONNECTION
had years of spiritual training under their belts. When the phone rang (in those days not frequently) it was usually a short exchange unless the prayer chain had been activated. Mrs. Jane Cutrer would call my grandmother who would call Mrs. Jessie Bruner, who would call someone else and prayers were made quietly and privately. It was such a singular yet communal act. One day, I mused, I would wear a hat and gloves to church and one day my name and telephone number would be taped to the door of refrigerators. Alas that was not the path God had chosen for me. Coming into the Catholic family fold I realized that intercessory prayer extended to the next world in the communion of saints. I still was slow to embrace all that it offers, widening my circle only to the Blessed Mother for several years. Now I am much more tuned in and more comfortable with both the idea and the practice. As I was hanging some blankets on the clothesline my eyes caught for the first time in a while names of a friendship