when your toddler teaches you how to pray

sunday morning and it's eggos and syrup and snow outside.

we don't often eat breakfast together. trent normally wolfs down peanut butter and bikes off to school, me shoving lunch at him and spooning pablum and making porridge and trying to brew some coffee while handing out vitamins. and quiet time has become something of an inner thing. a church i go to on the inside.

but today is sunday and it's quiet time all around us. we're sitting in the sabbath, here at our breakfast table. and it's a liturgy of sticky fingers and chatter.

we've long prayed over the food but suddenly, it's not enough. aiden puts down his eggo and folds his syrup hands and says, "i more pray."

so we stop and we close our eyes and he waits and we prompt, "thank you God for this food, amen." him repeating, but again, "i more pray" he says, and we smile across the table. "thank you God for this family" and it continues this way until we've run out of words and then he folds his hands tighter. "i more God."

and i'm tempted to lie prostrate upon a prayer rug like they do in eastern countries, for the holiness of my son's heart.

this, what it is, then, to pray without ceasing. when sentences end, to keep bowing, to keep waiting, to keep hoping, for more.


(linking with jen, laura, michelle, and ann)