Why pray the rosary as a busy mom?
I never thought I’d be saying this, but since the start of the new year (2025), I’ve been praying the rosary every single day.
I know, I know. Making a new year’s resolution is such a cliche. January 1st is the world’s new year, not the Church’s new year, but there’s something about the actual year number changing that makes goal setting more appealing to me. (Maybe that will change as I grow in my liturgical living!)
Before I tell you the fruit that’s come from this new prayerful practice, let me rewind to the motivation.
Some pre-rosary background
For most of my adult life as a reverted Catholic (since ~2017), I haven’t even wanted to pray the rosary. Even as I learned the promises of the rosary, the saints who loved the rosary, the Marian apparition messages that encouraged the rosary, I still never wanted to pray it.
I wanted to want to pray it. I knew I should pray it, but I just could never bring myself to sit down to do it consistently.
I had the typical excuses and feelings. It’s boring, repetitive, and long. I had all the excuses for not having enough time.
An invitation from Mary
In the fall of last year (2024), my sweet daughter was born and, in an unexplainable way, I felt Mary inviting me to enter deeper into my vocation as a mother.
After many hours of prayer and conversations with my husband, I decided not to go back to work to instead be fully present to my growing family.
With a newborn baby and a toddler, I can’t say I had an abundance of time on my hands. However, I kept feeling drawn to establish a prayer routine that would fit my current season of motherhood.
I started to go to a bi-weekly “pray and play” with some other moms from the moms group at my parish. The children play and the moms pray the rosary and chat. On the days that I prayed the rosary and enjoyed fellowship with other Catholic mamas, I noticed I was feeling more at peace.
Fast forward to advent, I felt Mary again inviting me to grow closer to her Son, specifically through the rosary. I prayed the rosary more during advent, and sometime before Christmas, I felt convicted to make 2025 the year I committed to praying it every single day.
Knowing the new year started with the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God, it seemed fitting to begin my commitment to the rosary then.
So with that, on January 1st, I began my daily rosary journey!
Not perfection, but protection
I’ll be honest. There have been a few days I’ve missed, but I have committed to “making it up” the next day by praying two rosaries.
Is it about perfection in saying I haven’t missed a day? No, though I sometimes feel a sinful wave of pride thinking how I’ve been able to incorporate this prayerful practice. But I quickly realize, it is the Holy Spirit that has sustained me in this devotion.
The reason I am committed to making it up the next day is because I know myself. Once I miss a day, I know it would be just as easy to miss the next day, and then just let the entire practice fall apart.
I also have a strong awareness of the evil one, and I know he tempts me away from anything that would bring me closer to Jesus (which is the whole point of the rosary and really any kind of prayer). As Christians, as we grow closer to Mary and ultimately to Jesus, we put a target on our backs. The evil one uses any subtle and manipulative tactic he can to try to stop us from growing closer to Jesus. When we are lukewarm in our faith life, the devil doesn’t need to pay as much attention to tempting us. When we aren’t even striving to avoid temptation, when we are indifferent to our prayer life, the evil one doesn’t need to do much. We stay far from the Lord on our own.
Committing to praying the rosary every single day is not about perfection but about the protection of my soul.
Quick side story…This blog post is a great example of the temptations of the evil one. I am trying to help other mamas feel encouraged that they could actual incorporate the beautiful practice of the rosary into their daily life, with the hope that they will grow in love of Jesus. I’ve sat down about a million times to try to write this post. I get so distracted, and I’ve noticed these recurring thoughts:“This post is so dumb. Do you actually think someone is going to read this? Who even cares about what’s happened in your life? No one. No one cares about your stupid prayer practice.” Mary helps me to see that these thoughts are from the evil one, and I say a quick, “Hail Mary full of grace, kick the devil in the face.”
It is now two months into 2025, and I wanted to share some of the fruit that has come from my daily rosaries.
Here are 5 cool things that have happened since I started praying a daily rosary...
I scroll way less!
I try not to be on my phone as much as possible during the day. The second I take out my phone, my toddler wants to see it, he wants to hold it, he says“song” or “picture” (aka listen to Spotify or look at photos we’ve taken recently). Other than capturing adorable moments and responding to texts here and there, it’s just easier to leave it out of sight as much a possible when he is awake rather than distract him.
However, when he is napping or after he goes to bed, I can very easily fall into mindlessly scrolling.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not anti-social media (more on social media another time). I like seeing updates from friends on Facebook, getting snippets of parenting advice (and laughs) from Instagram, finding recipe ideas or home inspiration from Pinterest, and more.
But man, time can flyyyy when you get sucked into a dopamine-hitting scroll sesh.
With this daily rosary goal at the forefront of my mind each day, it helps to convict me when I go to scroll on my phone.
It forces me to ask myself, “have I prayed my rosary yet today?” If I haven’t, I feel guilty (in a good way) knowing I am prioritizing scrolling over a prayer I’ve committed to saying.
Now during the times I would usually settle into opening up those apps, instead I settle into the prayers of the rosary.
2. I pray more with my husband.
For the last few months, my husband and I have been watching LOST (first time for the both of us). In a very early 2000s kind of way, every episode and every scene that would typically lead into a commercial ends with a cliffhanger. We haven’t totally binge watched it, but we’ve had some evenings of pushing the envelope with three episodes.
All that said, after we’ve done bedtime and our nightly cleanup, it’s been fun to get LOST together.
But if I haven’t prayed my rosary yet and I know I will be too tired to pray it before bed, I invite my husband to pray it with me.
It stirs in his heart the same way the scrolling guilt hits me. He knows that if he sits on the couch to wait for me to watch the show, he will probably just scroll or watch something else for a little while, so instead he is drawn into the prayer with me.
He’s mentioned the same insight that I’ve noticed. Going into the rosary you may not feel like you want to pray it, but you never regret praying it by the end.
It’s actually really nice to pray the rosary with someone else. It’s like a dance, a rhythmic back and forth, with each prayer having a natural split for each person to pray part of it.
3. I think about Jesus way more.
The rosary is about meditating on the mysteries while praying the decade of Hail Marys. Not simply stating the mystery and focusing on counting down Hail Marys. For the first time in my life, I’ve reflected on the mysteries in ways I never have before. The Holy Spirit has opened my heart as to why these mysteries are an important part of Jesus’ life and thus an important part of our faith.
I’ve tried this new practice of imaginative prayer where I enter into the scene of the mystery. I try to imagine what I would see, hear, and smell, who else would be there, what would the temperature be and the time of day, and anything else that would allow me to enter the scene more fully. It has been moving to try to put myself in Mary’s shoes, as Jesus’ mother, with Him in the garden in his agony. Being with my beloved child in pain and not being able to take it away. Or imaging being at the table as Jesus spoke the words that instituted the Eucharist. It is profound the way the Holy Spirit moves in our hearts when we intentionally try to enter these scenes, remembering that these are not made up stories, these are actual moments of history.
The transfiguration. The presentation. The coronation. And others too. I had a basically understanding of these mysteries, but my daily rosary practice has prompted me to look up where they are in Scripture and read articles on them from Catholic answers.
So while I do think about Jesus way more than I did before, I definitely still have my moments where my mind wanders to thinking about what I am going to cook for dinner or how badly I need to clean the showers. I am okay with being a work in progress in the prayer department. More on this in the advice below!
4. My 2 year old knows the prayers.
How do you pass down the faith to your children in a way that they actually want to practice it when they can make the choice on their own? This is a question my husband and I have spent a lot of time talking and praying about. And honestly, it could be a whole different post.
But one of the main pieces of advice we’ve heard again and again is that your children need to see you praying.
So while I usually pray the rosary during my toddler’s nap or after bedtime, sometimes I’ll pray while he’s independently playing or while I’m nursing the baby. I want my children to grow up remembering me praying rather than remembering me scrolling.
Recently, my toddler has started to say “by yourself” during our bedtime prayers, which includes the Our Father and Hail Mary prayers. While an outsider my not be able to decipher his adorable pronunciations, I know exactly when he is saying and he knows the entire prayers! I queued him up to pray the Fatima prayer, and lo and behold, he knew it as well! I’ve never taught him these prayers, but he’s clearly been absorbing me praying it out loud in the background of his play time.
Never underestimate what your little ones soak up when you don’t think they are listening. (Take this an encouragement, but also as a gentle warning!)
5. I’ve had more confidence and opportunities to speak of God’s love.
You know those moments when you are with family members or friends who you love so much but are not practicing the faith, and they randomly ask you a faith related question and you’re like OMGOODNESS, I need to say the perfect thing, this is my chance! And then afterwards you’re like, crap I totally screwed that up. But then after that, you bring it to prayer, and God is like, “It’s not your job to be the savior, that job is already taken.” Aka it’s not your job to convert their soul, you just have to be honest and loving in speaking truth.
Well since praying the rosary every day, I had one of these moments with a close family member. I am not one to be able to recall scripture easily, but when this particular conversation turned in a faith direction, this verse from Luke immediately popped into my head:
“…do not worry about how or what your defense will be or about what you are to say. For the Holy Spirit will teach you at that moment what you should say.” (Luke 12:11-12)
I quickly asked the Holy Spirit, and Mary, to give me the words to say. I have never had such a deep conversation about the faith with this family member, and I have never felt as free and confident to speak of God’s mercy and love as I did in that moment. As I’ve reflected back, all I keep thinking is that there is no coincidence this conversation is happening since I’ve adopted this daily rosary practice.
The rosary isn’t some magical tool that’s giving me superpowers. It is instead helping me to be an instrument (a “tool” if you will) of God’s love for all His children, wherever they are in their faith journey.
To all the Catholic mamas out there, especially those with littles who think a daily rosary is impossible, here is my advice…
1. Start with this prayer.
First off, I invite you to pause right now and say this short and simple prayer:
Lord, I want to be close to you. I know that your mother, Mary, wants me to be close to you too. Please help me to embrace the powerful prayer of the rosary as a way of drawing closer to you. Even when I do not feel in the mood to pray or I feel like I have the time, help me to prioritize my relationship with you. Please help me to remember that love is a choice and that choosing to pray the rosary can be a way for me to love you. I humbly ask this through the intercession of the Blessed Mother. Amen.
If you are not used to praying in this way—so conversationally—I encourage you to pray this way more along with the more formal and structured prayers of the rosary.
2. Commit to today and beyond.
After you’ve said that simple prayer, consider making a commitment for a set number of days. Start as small as today...commit to praying it by the end of today! Or try committing for a week and see how it goes. If you are able to do it for a week, then try setting a goal for the month. Or if you think you just want to jump in a commit for an entire year, do it!
3. Be okay with praying the rosary in the shower.
A practical piece of advice is to set realistic expectations of what praying the rosary will actually look like. As a busy mama with a baby and toddler, I quickly realized that the peaceful twenty-five minutes of prayer, alone in our prayer corner that I had imagined would happen to pray my daily rosary was just simply not feasible if I was going to sustain the practice.
Would it be ideal to pray in a silent adoration chapel, peacefully and slowly meditating on each mystery without any sound, interruptions or distractions? Yes but that is just not feasible in this season of life right now, and Mary has helped me to realize, that is totally fine!
So be okay with breaking the rosary up throughout the day.
Be okay with praying the rosary while in the shower.
Be okay with road-saries (a.k.a. rosaries while driving/in the car).
Be okay with using your fingers—your God-given rosary—if you don’t have your beads to count the decades.
There are probably people of a different opinion. People who think you must carve out silent time alone to pray and you shouldn’t just piece together the prayers throughout the day. Sure, there are some people that need a set time and place to pray. But personally for me, I let this ideal stop me from praying the rosary for far too long.
I would say that the devil often plants these falsely righteous opinions in our heads. Why? Because he sees that the rosary is a powerful tool that draws us closer to the Lord, so OF COURSE he is going to plant thoughts that prevent us from doing just that.
Be okay with praying the rosary however you are able to in your season of life and know that it is pleasing to Jesus however it looks.
4. Ask for Mary’s help.
Ask her to help you find the time in your day. She wants you to be close to her Son, and she wants to help you deepen that relationship.
Remember, there are graces and fruit from each rosary prayed, and these graces will sustain you in your practice of prayer. I’ve experienced this firsthand. Mary intercedes and draws me to enter into the mysteries each day in a way that I have been felt drawn to before.
My final thoughts…
While there are days I have a hard time getting started, I have never, seriously NEVER, prayed a rosary and thought, I wish I didn’t do that.
As I continue this devotion through 2025, I hope it becomes like second nature to me. And when 2026 rolls around, or even before that, I hope I can’t even imagine a day without praying the rosary.
And to you—my fellow Catholic mama—I hope the rosary transforms your daily prayer life too.
