How I Introduced My Husband to Our Lady and How She Got Him to Say the Rosary

Shared on www.animakinsi.blogspot.com for the Marian Mondays link up and the www.catholicbloggersnetwork.com Monthly Link Up Blitz.

Undeniably, Dennis received Our Lady’s prerequisite stamp of approval before we got married.  He gave me a sign that he was handpicked by God to be the spiritual leader of our family. So it behooved my mind why when instead of praying the rosary every night, he preferred to watch the Lakers play on TV.

  After two years of me begging to say prayers together and  Dennis brushing me off for one reason or another, I was not the picture of a satisfied wife and was in fact, ready to return him to Our Lady. 

“Blessed Mother,” I complained. “This is all wrong.  All I asked for was a man who would lead his family to heaven, but how can we get there when my husband's idea of praying together is just the Sunday Mass?   I want him to love you.  Since you got us in this together, I need your help to make it right.” 

“I need your help, too,”  she seemed to say to me.

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I was inspired with the idea to fast and then to show Dennis a video of the Marian apparitions of the twenty first century because that’s how I fell in love with Our Lady and where my dream of visiting Mejugorje was born.   Dennis gobbled the movie up.   I followed up with more DVD's on Fatima, Garabandal, Akita, Betania, and Mejugorje for movie nights, which he also lapped up.  But, sad to say, the interest was more fear-based, in keeping his soul clean before the prophecies materialized.  After going to confession a couple of times, he returned to worshipping a certain purple and yellow basketball team on ESPN.

After Baby#2 was born, I was determined that a new spiritual sheriff in town was stepping in to organize a family rosary every evening.  I began to pray with my young children. Through Our Lady, mediatrix of graces, I managed to convince Dennis to pray the rosary with us one miraculous night.

 The following night, he declined.  Next evening, his cellphone rang so the convenient excuse was predictably, “Go ahead and pray without me.  I’ve got to take this phonecall.”

“We’ll wait for you to get done,” I said.

Furrowed brows over otherwise amazing blue eyes stared at me as he continued with his important conversation,  “Blah, blah, blah, hubcaps, rims and tires, blah, airbags, radiator, blah…”

Baby cried.  I picked her up from the crib and returned to sit beside Dennis, who was still on phone.  He moved away to his desk mumbling, “I’m going to be here a while.  Just go ahead.”

Crying Baby and I followed him and I casually leaned against the desk.  “Wah-wah-wah”  Baby said.

 “We’ll wait,”  I said.

Another furrowed frown look.  “Hey, buddy, I gotta go.  I’ll talk to you later.”

“Thank you,”  I said.

“What’s up with saying the rosary every night suddenly?”

“Suddenly?!?,”  I screeched.  “I’ve only been asking it for the last FOUR years!”

I’m guessing the lilt in my voice and the shadowy trailing made Dennis realize that a very determined wife is like a gum stuck to his Nikes, so we said the rosary.  And have said it every night since then. 

 It wasn’t long before we consecrated our lives and our home to the Sacred Heart and Immaculate Heart, and the rest of our family was vested with the brown scapular.  We’ve also been to live apparitions of several Mejugorje seers and partake of weekday Masses, Adoration and regular Confession.  After one of those apparitions, Dennis decided that we didn’t need the TV in our home anymore.  He now rounds up the crew when it is time to pray the evening rosary. And it melts my heart when just before bedtime, I catch him gazing at this picture with so much devotion. 

  If you ask my darling husband how them Lakers are doing, he’ll probably say, “Lakers who?” … Although admittedly, before he left for the big Crimson Tide championship game at a friend’s house, he managed to gather up the family for the rosary and say an extra Hail Mary for the quarterback.

Our Lady’s fourth promise given to Blessed Alan Roche to those devoted to the rosary rings true: [The rosary] will cause virtue and good works to flourish; it will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God; it will withdraw the hearts of men from the love of the world and its vanities, and will lift them to the desire of eternal things. Oh, that souls would sanctify themselves by this means.

  +AMDG