Fruit Inspection

Praying in the York home is not something we take lightly. We do it before meals, in the middle of the day if something comes up, and each night before bed we have family prayer time.

Family prayer time consists of all of us sitting on the floor or on somebody’s bed, and then we all take turns saying what we are sorry for, thankful for, or what we can praise God for from that day. Then we hold hands and say our sorry’s, thank you’s, and praises together.

The only one that doesn’t get in on the fun is Stafford. But not to feel the least bit slighted in any way, he does manage to gain some attention during family prayers.

Imagine us sitting there in our circle. Heads bowed, eyes closed. Then Stafford runs in the room chasing his tail. It’s hard enough to keep my 3 year olds attention on praying without the ruckus that dog creates. One night we heard a funny sound and all of us looked up to see him humping the big teddy bear in the corner. Now let me tell you, that lead to an interesting post-Amen discussion.

As much as we want our kids to know the importance of prayer, we never want them to think it’s something boring or dull. I think Emery is catching on, as these were 2 of his prayers from yesterday:

After breakfast I walked into the kitchen and he asked, “Mommy, can I be a race car driver when I grow up?” I said, “Well, I’m sure you can. But you need to ask God what He wants for your life.” So Emery immediately looked up to the ceiling and shouted, “God? Can I be a race car driver?”

Then he looked down and under his breath in a deep voice said, “Yes.”

Next he looked up at me with his eyes as big as saucers and exclaimed, “HE SAID YES!!!!!”

Then at dinner, Daddy asked who wanted to say the blessing. Emery got excited and said that he would do it. He started out praying in his best fire and brimstone voice, “FAUDER GOD, tank you for my train and for my lellow airplane that hooks to the big gun and when you pull it back it goes like ‘dis…(whooshing noise here)…Amen”.

See, nothing boring and dull about that! :)