Friday, January 9, 2009

Elisabeth's prayers

Elisabeth has started saying prayers before bed each night. It is incredibly sweet, and a nice window into what's in her head. She also has an increased curiousity about God - asking us the hard questions like when was God born, who are God's parents , etc. She asked me yesterday how God can look over everyone all at once, and as evidence to all of you as to why I should not teach Sunday school, I will reveal my answer: That is his superpower. She is very into superheroes lately and she was completely satisfied with the answer, which is my goal with the theological questions - no follow ups.

Anyway, before bed we say our prayers. We each take turns. I've tried to instill the "give thanks" idea - so we say thank you for various things each day. Some examples:
"Dear God, thank you for Charlotte."
"Dear God, thank you for rainbows."
"Dear God, thank you for my pogo stick."

I told her that we can also ask God to keep people safe and/or healthy, and/or restore their health. My mother had a cold. So now each night I hear:

"Dear God, please help Grandmommy and Granddaddy and all of their dogs - Molly, Abigail, and Chloe - and Aunt Elisabeth and Uncle Jacob and Annaleis feel better from their colds and not get any new colds."

She also goes through each member of Doug's side of the family - through each parent, sibling, and cousin. Wishing each of them immunity from colds.

Sweetly, on the way to school the other day, she sent up a prayer for Doug's mom's dog who recently died:

"Dear God, please have music in heaven because Aisling and me like to dance."

She's also been capitalizing on asking God for things. A recent favorite: "Dear God, please never, ever, ever let it be super duper shmooper windy again." (we recently had a wind storm). Another good one: "Dear God, please let it rain tomorrow and then the sun come out so that I can see a rainbow."

But tonight, I think she got God confused with Santa. After going through the littany of things we give thanks for each night she said, "Oh and dear God, please give me a skateboard. Aaaaaaaa-men."

Edit: I forgot to add a prayer that she said in the car on the way to school, some morning after we had told her that we had no idea who God's parents are. "Dear God, please tell me who your mommy and daddy are. And when you were born. I won't tell anyone."

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