Have rosary, will travel.

There is a photo of my then-fiance lying, wiped out, on the loading ramp to a 17-foot rental truck, jam-packed with all my belongings. Michael had come to bring me home after my year away at grad school. It was a Sunday afternoon, and we'd spent all day loading that truck. After my friend snapped the photo and left, we closed the truck, hooked my car up to the tow dolly on the back, and we were off on the trip that began one of our most cherished traditions as a couple.

We drove 2,000 miles from Chicago to Los Angeles in one week. We'd done it the year before in reverse, when Michael had brought me out to Chicago. But there were two major differences coming back to L.A. We were engaged--the year before we didn't know if we would stay together. And most important, every morning, as we drove, the two of us prayed the rosary.

As cradle Catholics, we knew the devotion fairly well. I've had a rosary next to my bed since I was a teenager. I prayed it off and on, usually when I was in my car, counting the Hail Marys on my fingers. But beyond the occasional funeral, I hadn't prayed it with another person since grade school. Neither had Michael.

The devotion itself dates back to the 15th century. Tradition associates it with the Dominicans, but it more likely has its roots in the 12th century, when the illiterate poor took to reciting large numbers of Our Fathers in place of the written psalms that they couldn't read. Over time, meditations were added, and the rosary, as we know it, probably came into being around 1495, when it was first mentioned in an indulgence bull by Pope Alexander VI.

Michael and I don't run into as much trouble on our trips after we've prayed the rosary. Heading east the year before I came home, we almost lost our money, the truck lost its brake drum, and we arrived in the Chicago area with a tornado watch, complete with rain streaming at us horizontally in the wind.

Heading west a year later in September, although we took the northern route through Nebraska and Wyoming, we managed to stay one day ahead of the bad weather. The truck was perfectly docile, even the worst motel was unremarkable, and when we stopped in Las Vegas for a small spree, we won enough money to pay for the stop and then some.

Now, I'm not suggesting to pray to Our Lady so you can cash in at the slots. But I do know that when Michael and I pray the rosary together, it draws us closer. As we prayed on that trip, we talked about the insights we'd gotten while meditating on the lives of Mary and Jesus. That opened up new ways for us to know each other and gave us time to talk about important things that new couples don't always talk about before they marry.

Time has passed. We're also exploring other types of prayer. But the rosary is still with us even on short trips. During one difficult time, we had an hour's drive, and we prayed the rosary. It wasn't a magic bullet, but it gave us the grace to see past the immediate muck.

When my daughter is riding with us, she'll often lead the prayer, announcing the mysteries and keeping count on the beads. It's easy for her to do the mysteries because I have a special rosary. The Our Father beads are long and three sided. In shorthand on each side is the appropriate joyful, sorrowful, or glorious mystery, with the first bead noting which type of mystery is said on what day.

I got it the summer before I returned to Los Angeles. I'd seen one like it at the National Shrine and Basilica in Washington, D.C., then found another in, of all places, the Mall of America in Minneapolis (I was traveling a lot that summer). I bought that one and prayed with it for the first time as I drove to Chicago to meet Michael.

I picked him up at O'Hare Airport at 5 a.m. We got a few hours of rest at my uncle's house, then went to load up the truck. It was a mammoth job, and we felt very blessed when my friend showed up unexpectedly to help.

But the much larger job was ahead of us. It's one we tackle every day with the help of Our Lady and her son, our Lord, Jesus Christ. And when we start off on a long trip, we take that special rosary from my car's ashtray and, together, make the sign of the cross.