Category: General Family News

As a print journalism minor, I studied promotions and advertising a bit in undergrad.  I am always entertained and amused by product ads and labels.

Well, as I mentioned last week, Jos. A Banks has a great “Buy One, Get Two Free” sale online on men’s dress clothes going on. Daniel needed both khakis and polos, so I was really excited when his clothes arrived!

I had to laugh though when I read the tag on the polo shirts:

Daniel has worn them, I’ve washed them, and it’s true! They haven’t:

• Stained
• Wrinkled
• Pilled
• Shrunk
• The collars haven’t curled, and
• They have maintained their color and shape!

Virtually indestructible!

Daniel should be able to wear this shirt for the rest of his life.

I thought, at the bottom of the tag, they just should add, “Till death do us part!”

Watching her brother pull himself up and walk around holding onto the furniture:

“Micah did a great big job! He’s going to walk soon!”

After emptying the dishwasher with Mommy:

“I did a great big job! I helped you, Mommy!”

The morning after we had a bunch of people over for dinner:

“We had a great big fun having our friends over!” she exclaimed exuberantly. Then she quietly added, “But now they went back to their house.”

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.