A Day of Thanksgiving

Yesterday (February 27) was a special day for the whole family because we celebrated 2 occasions:  Roadrunner's 7th birthday, and our 14th Wedding Anniversary.  For us it was a day of tremendous gratitude and thanksgiving to Our Loving Lord for all the undeserved gifts He has been lavishing us and our whole family over the years.

To celebrate the day, we all spent sometime in adoration before the Lord, exposed (late afternoon), and we attended Holy Mass in the evening.  Dinner out with close family friends followed and when we got home we gathered 'round Roadrunner and his birthday cake and sang him a hearty Happy Birthday.

Last week, to mark our anniversary this year we sat for our family portrait which we like to do every so often.  We all enjoyed the exercise as it usually involves dressing up for the occasion and trying to look nice in photos that we will be keeping together with memories in years to come.

taken early evening before heading to the studios

Our Wedding Anniversary Prayer

Loving Lord Jesus, we thank You for giving us another year together.  We thank You for sustaining the precious love that we have for each other, and for strengthening the bonds which draw us closer each day.  We thank You, not only for the joys we have known together, but also for the pains that You allow us to face in order to fortify us in spirit.  Most of all, we thank You for the wonderful gift of faith that has enabled us to grow together and come through the trials we encounter. 

Loving Lord, we ask pardon for any shortcomings on our part:  for the times when we do not cooperate with Your grace:  for being unforgiving or unwilling to ask forgiveness, for justifying our faults when we fall short of doing our best in the performance of our duties in our vocation and state of life, for failing to look to You as our Sole Saviour in everything. 

We especially pray for our son (Roadrunner), whom You sent us 7 years ago as a very special gift to show Your love and faithfulness to our family.  We thank You for the privilege of being parents to him and to the rest of our children.  We pray that he may grow up in Your image - in all he thinks of, says and does.

Dear Mother Mary, we thank you for guiding us toward your Son.  We entrust our children to you, to love them and always keep them under your mantle.  We ask for your powerful intercession and help so that they may be nurtured and formed into the kind of people they were created to be.  We pray that they may be given the grace to discern God's will and purpose for their lives, and for them to have the generosity of heart so that in response to God's calls, like yourself, they may always say "Fiat voluntas tua!."  Amen.