It's 3 am. I feel the air pressure in the room change as a little one sneaks in. My eyes are still closed as our oldest girl, just 4, appears on my side of the bed, but I feel the brush of her small hand on my arm.
"Did you have a bad dream?" I say, the usual cause of her appearance in my room at this hour.
"No. I just need your help."
"Help with what?"
"I need to you to help me pray to ask Jesus in my heart."
Confused, I ask her what she said again.
She repeats, "I need you to help me pray to have Jesus in my heart. I want to go to heaven to be with God."
My mind races, fully awake now, trying to scramble around and process what I've just heard. This is my 4 year old. It's 3 am. The ramifications of this question are deep and life-changing. I hold her close in my arms and tell her, "I will help you. Let's talk about it when the sun comes up."
I want to be fully present for this moment. I wonder silently if this is the right choice, but I can't talk to her rationally at 3am about the choice she wants to make and I really want to be able to.
This is my girl of deep questions. In the last month I've gotten the following, usually at 6:30am when she first wakes up:
"Mama, how do I know what is truth?"
"Mama, can two girls get married?"
"Mama, how does a baby get inside of you?" (She actually asked this one at age 3, but now she wants more details.)
The list goes on and on. She desperately wants to grasp the world around her. Not HOW things work, but why. Mostly interpersonal relationships. She recently held a fellow mom friend of mine captive with her questions for more than thirty minutes. The questions were all about my friend's parents and grandparents, divorce, death and on and on. This girl cuts from, "My favorite colors are pink and purple," straight to, "my baby sister died. Is your mama dead?" It's kind of rattling. It keeps me on my toes. I am grateful for the job of helping to shepherd this little deep well of a heart. I pray for the knowledge and understanding to do so.
No comments:
Post a Comment