Being Intentional

               Your house may be entirely different than ours, but we often find it hard to ‘teach’ the kids to pray.  Sure we pray at meals but when we really pray and have our quiet times our children aren’t always there.  (Hence the point of quiet = no children) They know we do our quiet times in the mornings or after they go to bed but it isn’t the same at teaching them how to do it.  Let’s just go ahead and talk about bedtimes. Sure I would love to tell you that we have this fabulous bedtime routine where we lie on our beds together and read a bible story every night followed by a wonderful time of prayer with each child, but that isn’t reality.  True life is that we are rushing home from a practice, church or ball field and shouting for everyone to get showers as quickly as possible so that we can all jump in bed with a quick kiss so that I can rush to the kitchen and shuffle through backpacks and folders to get ready for the next day.  Whew.  Where are the quiet moments?  Where are the nightly prayers?  With each night eaten up with sports, church, and commitments our nightly routines kept getting later and later until the nighttime routine was maybe one night a week.   (Anyone with me yet or am I the lone ranger here?)

                We have tried putting our prayer lists on the bathroom mirrors so the kids can see as we add and remove the requests.  It was great to see them adding requests as well as knowing that we would be praying for them each morning but it just wasn't personal. 

                This summer we really felt that we had to be intentional about teaching prayer.  If we weren’t intentional about it then it would be passed by and we would unintentionally put something else in its place. 

                Well, our newest prayer focus is for the children that live in the orphanage that we are adopting from in Haiti.  We printed a picture of each child and glued it to a popsicle stick with their name on it and placed it in a can.  Every day we each pick a child to pray for.  It has been wonderful!   I think the pictures have been the connection to really hitting home for them.  They realize that it is their responsibility to pray for that child.  They took ownership of it!  Their prayers have been very sweet and it has been amazing.  SO amazing that my children had a lesson for me the other night….

                If you have talked with us recently you know that Todd has been working long hours and this particular night he was home and we were having a family dinner at a normal time.  I had cooked and we were all sitting down to dinner.  All the women will understand this completely because after you have shopped, prepared, plated, served and everyone is now seated you just want to have everyone eat and enjoy this meal that you have made just for them right?  Well, I (in the ‘all about me’ haste) announce that daddy will pray a prayer for all of our kiddos tonight in one big prayer for everything so we can get right on into eating.  I mean, seriously, we have prayed for them at breakfast and at lunch and God would completely understand a blanket prayer from daddy covering these children.  It’s all good right?  As we bow our heads this little voice speaks up and says “But, I want to pray for my own child….daddy doesn’t know what I want to pray for.”  And another little voice says:  “Me too…I want to say my own prayer”.  It took a millisecond for my heart to be checked and for me to see my gross sin and my Savior in my children.  They got it!  They got Him!  I can’t tell you exactly what they prayed for because I cried through it.  Our amazing Savior can hear the prayers of 5 and 8 year olds while their mama is praying for forgiveness and still listening to everyone else around the world!  What an awesome God we serve!

                Our slightly cold meal tasted even better as it was covered with amazing prayers for precious children.  Some day we will be in Haiti and I don’t know if we will ever meet these children.  They may still be at the orphanage or (I pray) they are home with their forever families.  No matter where they are I know they are prayed for each day.

                Here’s a picture of our prayer can in case you want to be intentional with your kiddos.