"In morning prayer, I fast," McCormick further explained. "I don't eat, and I get up and I pray. I try not to do anything in between just getting up and then praying. After prayer is when I start getting dressed and eating."

She said she tries to center herself by taking a deep breath and clearing her mind.

Then, using a little prayer book, she recites the Lord's Prayer, the Creed and a list of people in need of her prayers.

Sometimes she lights incense for them, using a clay bowl and charcoal.

After dinner and before bed, McCormick visits her iconostasis again.

These rituals are important to her.

"The faith is sensual, like senses," she said. "When you walk in to the church, you see the icons, you smell the incense, you see the candles lit -- everything in the church brings you back to prayer."

A SAD FAMILY LOSS

From an Irish background and raised as a Methodist, McCormick didn't turn to the Greek Orthodox Church until 2004, when she joined with her husband, Lewis McCormick.

"After I had my first child, I was looking for a community that I could participate in that would help me with my faith and raising my children to be Christians," she recalled. "We ended up in the Greek Orthodox Church."

Her Orthodox faith has become increasingly vital to her life since becoming a single mother after Lewis died in February.

He had been in declining health, a condition partially associated with losing his job through cutbacks.

"Family finances became very tight," said McCormick, 49. "I was very strong in my faith before, but absolutely I could not have faced the things that I have had to face without my faith."

Her children, Richard, 10, and Rachel, 9, say prayers before family meals and accompany their mother to the Divine Liturgy each Sunday morning.

Without her children, she also tries to attend Great Vespers on Saturday nights.

-- Betsey Bruner