Begin with the Prayer of Abandonment.

When was the last time you prayed with your spouse? Not just a haphazard family grace, or a panicked rosary over an unexpected emergency. (These are good to do, by the way … I’m just talking about something else.) When was the last time you spent an extended period of time in God’s presence, listening for his voice and speaking to him as you would address a friend?

This week I watched as two author friends of mine — significantly younger than me — were suddenly hospitalized. Both of these women are deeply prayerful individuals, and when I heard of their emergencies the first thought I had was: I wonder how their husbands are coping? Both these women have public followings, and yet they also yearned for privacy in their respective situations. And so, they turned to their families for support and prayer.

How often, in times of crisis, is our first impulse to ask our spouse to pray for us? If not the first, how far down the list does he (or she) rate? We all have certain people in our lives we feel have God’s ear, and immediately go to them. The question is . . . is our spouse one of them?

And if not, what can we do to change that?