Tonight at our bedtime prayer, Mara and I had so much for which to thank God! We thanked Him for another stroller we were given–and baby food from Target. We thanked Him Daddy could grill hamburgers for dinner and we could have chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream for dessert. We thanked God that Grandmom & Grandpa could come over with the aunts and uncles and baby Sophia. We prayed for Daddy to be safe coming home tonight and for the whole family to sleep well.
I stroked her cheek. “Goodnight, sweetheart,” I was saying, as she suddenly called out, “Oh! Pray about I don’t have an oval!”
At first I was perplexed, until Mara started to act it out. “Pray about I don’t have a hu-la-loop!” she said earnestly.
Ohhhhhhhh–a hula hoop!
Now that I understood she was asking God for a hula hoop, I had a couple of conflicting thoughts and tried, the best I knew how, to express those thoughts in words a two-year-old could internalize.
“God always wants you to ask Him about things that you want,” I told her. “But you know what? He decides about it. He might say ‘yes, you can have a hula hoop.’ Or he might say ‘No, you don’t need a hula hoop right now.’ Or God might say ‘Wait! You can have a hula hoop later, but not now.’ And if God says, ‘yes,’ you should say ‘Thank you, God, for the hula hoop.’ And if God says, ‘No,’ you should say, ‘It’s okay because I know God wants what’s best for me.’ And if God says ‘Wait,’ you should say, ‘It’s okay. I will wait.'”
Yeah, maybe I said way too much! But I didn’t want my daughter to get the idea that God is a genie that grants wishes or something.
Mara looked like she understood. So I prayed, “Dear God, Mara would like to have a hula hoop. Please help her to wait. Help her to thank You, if You say ‘yes.’ Help her to obey You if You say ‘no.’ Amen.”
We opened our eyes.
Mara’s eyes lit up with all the sparkle of Christmas morning. “I’m going to get a hu-la–loop!” she squealed, shivering with excitment.
Part of me sighed, thinking ‘She didn’t understand anything I said’ and then the other part heard the verse ‘unless you have the faith of a little child. . . ‘
She has no doubt that God will give her that “hu-la-loop”! . . .
. . . I want to trust Him that way, for the good things He has already promised.
