Dear God ...
A 3-year Old's Prayer
Dear Got, (working on pronouncing d's)
Where is your house?
Please let me get a birt (bird).
I already have a cage and foot (food).
Amen.
I have to go to the bathroom.
And now I need a trink. (drink).
An Elementary-Age Child's Prayer
Dear God,
Thank you for mommy and daddy and my family and friends.
Thank you for the gift of basketball and shooting 3-pointers.
Thank you for my legs and for running and for PE and recess and for my teacher who is really nice.
Please let us have extra recess today.
Why does it have to rain so much lately, God?
An Adolescent's Prayer
God,
Are you even there?
Growing up is not what I thought it would be.
School is a lot of work.
I'm not a kid ... not an adult.
Where do I fit?
Friends are my life.
There are expectations ... everywhere ... from everyone.
Where are you?
A Parent's Prayer
Dear Father,
Thank you for this day. I don't know if I am equipped to handle the multitude of small and big things; please make me so.
First things first, please help me find my bifocals so I can check my son's homework stacked on the counter which I was too exhausted to look at last night after cleaning up the spilled, stuck-on Moose Munch (left over from Christmas, I guess?) crushed into sticky bits of carmel goo mixed with goldfish in our 4-year old's bureau of drawers.
Speaking of homework, please help. Give me wisdom to understand equations and digits and place values and fractions and decimals and grouping and regrouping the 'new' way. Please put smarter, cooler adults in my children's lives who understand elementary school math when I am not able.
Father, today help me clean counters, cut crusts, scrub toilets and wipe toothpaste from sinks with a happy heart, realizing there are sick moms who would give anything to do these very tasks. Help me especially remember this when I change rolls of toilet paper for the umpteenth time even though I bought and posted a sign reminding my children this very act would not cause damage to their systems. Yes, Lord, help us remember the small acts of service are a daily gift. Thank you for our health today, for we know not what tomorrow will bring.
Today I ask you to give me strength of mind and spirit when I face tantrums and refusal to eat broccoli and 'smelly chicken' and disharmony at bedtime. I pray for the right words - or maybe no words - when the people I am raising are changing faster than I can blink. It's scary when they have more commitments on their calendars than I have room to record, and when they seem troubled or maybe aren't troubled but just have voice malfunctioning syndrome or something. Help me find you in these moments and seasons. Help me find you and help my children find you through me.
I pray for the woman down the road who is fighting breast cancer. I pray for her children who must go to radiation treatments with her because their father travels extensively and they are homeschooled. I pray for another friend who is losing a fight with brain cancer. I pray for the family who will soon lose their momma and spouse. I pray for a repairman who visited urgent care only to learn he needed a stent put in his heart. I pray for the woman who just lost her second husband at a young age and now is a widow facing life alone with four small children. Where does it end? Lord, why does it seem sickness and death and fatality are chasing our community? Why must sickness take young parents from their children? And why does it take sickness and death to remind me of the fragility and beauty of the very life you have given?
Our schools ... I pray for safety. I pray for the administrators and teachers who are doing much more than teaching each day. They are parenting and loving and leading and protecting.
What is happening with our nation, Father? It seems we have lost our way. We are frightened to turn on the news in front of our children. What will they hear? What will I hear? And where will the divisiveness take us? What can we say that will not offend? Father, have we lost the ability to have open dialogue? Without dialogue, how can we understand each other?
As I put my feet on the floor this morning, Lord, the weight of this life is heavy. We don't have the answers. Remind us today, and always, that you do.
Father, help us - and our children see - we were all 4-year olds once, asking for birts (birds).
We were all elementary students once, savoring recess.
And we will all grow old.
We're really more the same than we are different, going through the same ages and stages, praying the same prayers. Maybe in different languages with different words, and maybe even to different gods. But we all share the same set of hands and fold them or hold them or extend them in search of more.
Father, today, and every day, help me not live as though I have all the answers. Help me ask the right questions and give me the grace to ask for forgiveness every time I mess up.
Amen.
1 John 5:14: This is the confidence we have in approaching God, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
