Faith and Freckles

In our family, we often giggle about the way our 3-year-old daughter’s prayers tend to get all muddled up.

For example, I once said, “Don’t forget to pray for Daddy to be safe on the road. He’s doing a lot of driving today.” Her prayer?

“God, please don’t let Daddy fall out of the car while he’s driving it.”

When I asked her to remember her big brother during the first day of his new job, she prayed,

“Please, God, don’t let anyone steal Chandler while he’s at work.”

We laugh, but in reality some of those little-girl prayers show a whole lot of faith. Like when she prayed,

“Dear God, Thank you for the dog…that we don’t have.”

She often thanks God for funny things, but usually they’re things we actually have. Like fingernails. Or paper. We laughed about the dog…the one we didn’t have, but that she was thankful for anyway. We laughed harder when she started praying for the unknown dog by name.

We laughed, but you know what? Here we are, just a couple of weeks later, introducing to you the newest member of our family.

Meet Freckles, our new Border Collie…

And yes, she actually has freckles, so she fits in perfectly with our family.

Pray in faith, friends!

Thanks for stopping by.

They pray, I smile

I cannot lie. I LOVE this stage where the toddler prayers go on and on and on and on and…well, you get the picture. I love hearing what’s important in a toddler’s world.

And I love that young children want to pray, not just at certain appointed times, but whenever the urge hits. That urge hit our little one several times tonight, and each time she would suddenly burst out with “I’m saying a prayer!” Whether we were in the middle of a game, doing the supper dishes, or whatever else we were involved in, each time we all stopped and took her chubby little outstretched hand and listened to her prattle on and on and on.

Of course she thanked God–repeatedly–for each and every member of the family, and “for cookies and food” and even “for eating Cheerios in church.” And even though she’s not yet two and a half, she asked God more than once to “help us to always be helpful to our mommies, and to our daddies, and to our Chandlers and our Addys and our Connors.”

What a treat to hear her earnestly chattering away to God, with her eyes squeezed tightly shut, mentally going through every great thing He’s done for her. At those moments, none of us wanted to be anywhere else but right there listening along as she prayed.

After getting her all tucked in for the night, I began to reflect on the joy I get from hearing each of my children pray. They each have their own unique “styles,” and hearing them pray helps me see more clearly who they are.

A few weeks ago, my oldest was instructed, as part of a creative writing assignment, to write a prayer of thanksgiving to God. The next morning as I was going through his work, I found these words he’d penned:

Dear God,

We don’t deserve this.

We don’t deserve all our possessions, or having such an easy life.

We don’t even deserve to live.

But You gave us all of that and much more, because of Your unlimited and unfathomable love for us.

If all we did was thank You our whole lives, we could never thank You enough.

We can try, but we’ll never get close.

Thank You for Your love and mercy.

Thank You for our lives, our stuff, everything we have.

Thank You for watching over us, even when we aren’t.

Thank You for always giving us someone to turn to.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen

I’ll admit, my throat tightened up a little as I closed the notebook.  I hope I am always touched by the sweet prayers I get to hear from my toddler, teenagers, and in between. I feel pretty certain that they’re making God smile, too.

Thanks for stopping by!