A Mother's Place to Pray

It's a practice of our Orthodox faith to have a home church--a place to worship and keep both our souls and bodies engaged with our Holy Lord (http://orthodoxwiki.org/Icon_corner).  I have posted pictures of our prayer corner before (http://theclaytonianchronicle.blogspot.com/2012/01/icon-army.html)--It is a work in progress.  It is a good place for the family to pray--although I plan to place Icons down low near the kids' book basket so they have a place with Icons at their eye level.  But I realized today, that this is not the place where I pray most frequently.  I pray here...

…In my kitchen.  Ever since we moved into this house a little over a year ago, I placed this travel Icon diptych over our kitchen sink.  In the old place, I had something similar over our stove.  Both places it was a pass through from the kitchen to the family room where I could both spend my time in the kitchen and watch over my children playing (or fighting).  I spend most of my day in our kitchen.  I cook meals at the stove and feed the family at the kitchen table; I do dishes at the sink; I draw and teach the kids at our table; and the laundry room is on the other end of the kitchen.  And pray here a lot.

In the morning when I wake up, I often grab the diptych and our Bible, set up and pray at the kitchen table.  The kids will begin waking one by one as I pray.  They can all come sit with me at the table and wake up as I pray and I feel I can easily say to them, "Just one moment, I'm praying."  Or if they need their milk more urgently some mornings, I can attend to them quickly since we are already in the kitchen and easily return to morning prayer.  Why not include them?  This is not their prayer time, it's mine.  Then I return my little shrine to it's central location over the kitchen sink.  Throughout the day, I will see it and say a little prayer.

It only makes sense that a mother would pray where she spends most of her time.  It is good that we have our family prayer place out in the open, on an Eastern wall and where all who enter can immediately view it.  That is for everyone else.  But this little place in the kitchen is my sanctuary.

(As I have said before, Kristiana likes to move statues around our house and she added the statue of Mary this month.  
It's a glow-in-the-dark statue that I received in first grade from my teacher for learning the fourteen stations of the cross)

I also want to emphasize that this picture was not posed.
I threw my prayer rope up on the prayer book before I washed something and thought that maybe I should make a post about my prayer place