"We are happy that ... "

I love that my little ones pray on their own. We have never given them a specific prayer for meal times or bed times. We have just encouraged them to talk to God from their hearts and say anything they want.

Months ago they really started opening up at prayer time and being very vocal and at first I really wanted to steer their "language" toward what I felt appropriate for prayer. Lets face it, most of us feel the need to pray in very specific ways. This is not necessarily a bad thing but I think the simplicity of a child's heart tells us so much!

I am SO glad I held off on correcting what I thought needed to be corrected and just let them be because through their words I have been blessed!

Here goes a typical prayer from one of the kids.

"Thank you for this day and we hope to have a good day. We hope to obey. We hope to make new friends and we hope to have fun at the park. We are happy that you gave us this food. We are happy that we got moved and we are happy that we have already met people. Amen."

So what I really wanted to change at first was the "hope to's" and the "happy that's". I wanted them to learn to ask for things. Like this,

"Father we ask that you help us obey this day"

or to praise God for the great things like this,

"We praise you and thank you for the people you have provided for use to meet and be friends with".

Then I realized in the simplicity of their prayer - there is abundant truth.

First, God created us to be happy and joyful beings and I don't think anything else in the world pleases God more than for us to find joy and happiness in what He provides. There is no better "thank you" than to tell someone that what they did for you made you happy!! If M2 came home and said, "Look at all you did today, it makes me so happy!" I think my heart would find great delight! (I might just faint from shock as well but that is for a different post on what little men recognize when they come home ;)!) It would definitely go further than, "Thank you for taking care of all this"!

Secondly, I looked up the definition for hope and came across this,

"to expect with confidence: trust"

What more does God ask of us than "to expect with confidence" that He will provide! Or to "trust" that He will hear our hearts!

Sometimes we can accidently steer our children from a true, pure, relationship with their creator and into a religion of traditions by accident. Don't get me wrong - we NEED, oh so desperately need to steer their hearts towards what is right but in some things we should let them tread the waters for themselves and make for themselves what is true to them. In doing this, my hope is that when they are adults they will not wonder if what they believe is what they believe or just the beliefs of parents that were handed down!

So, for this day I am happy!