The Quiet Habit That Will Change Your Year

My kitchen timer goes off at nine fifteen. The dishwasher is running. The dog is already asleep on her side of the rug. I sit at the table with a cold mug of whatever I didn't finish at dinner, and I give God four minutes. That's the whole practice. It's called the examen, and Ignatius of Loyola wrote it down almost five hundred years before I needed it.

Five questions, one pen

Where did I notice God today? Where did I miss him? What am I grateful for? What am I grieving? What do I want to carry into tomorrow? That's it. No app. No streak to break. If you lose the notebook, use the margin of whatever paperback is closest. The point is not the paper; the point is the asking.

The first week felt thin. I wrote about traffic and a stubbed toe. By the second week, the answers started arriving with specifics. A neighbor's wave I had almost missed. A sharp word to my oldest I needed to walk back. A slow grief over my father's hearing that I had been pretending wasn't there.

Four minutes is not enough time to fix anything. That's the gift. You stop trying to fix and start learning to notice. The day has already happened. The Holy Spirit is the one who hands it back to you, one small frame at a time, asking what you'd like to do with what you saw.

The examen doesn't tell you to be a better person. It asks you to be a more attentive one.