No Jesus Mommy!

Lately, I have been trying even more than usual to pray with Barrett.

I have friends with kids his age that claim their child prays every night with them. When I have asked if it really is them praying and their child is just kind of "playing along", they have told me that their child actually prays on their own. (I won't get in to whether or not I believe them.)

Since Barrett is WAY ahead in the development of his talking skills, I figured I need to really get going on the praying thing.

So, each night and nap time when I take Barrett into his room, we sit in his rocking chair. He loves for me to sing to him, which considering my singing ability, I need to sing while he'll still let me. Instead of singing the usual Old McDonald, I have attempted to change to Jesus Loves Me.

When I would start to sing Jesus Loves Me, Barrett would yell, "No Jesus Mommy, sing animal song."

I'm not sure how the big man feels about the whole "No Jesus" statement, but I would assume that it is probably frowned upon.

I thought I would have to give up on the song change until I found a compromise.

Our new song is, "Old man Noah built an ark, EIEIO, and on this ark he had two..."

He now asks for the "Man song", so at least I'm hitting a Bible story.

Our prayer time pretty much is limited to me asking what he wants to thank Jesus for which he usually says a list of people and toys then I throw in a few of my own prayers. Even though I know he doesn't really get it, we'll keep saying it.

Since we have a system for nap time and bedtime, I thought I'd start throwing random prayers in his day.

On Sunday, I had the perfect opportunity.

On the way home from church, it started raining again. Barrett looked out the window and said, "Mommy, no rain again."

I responded that I couldn't make it stop raining, but maybe he could talk to Jesus about it.

In the backseat he said, "Jesus, no more rain please."

I tried to tell him that it was very good to ask Jesus and that Jesus heard him, but that doesn't mean that Jesus will choose to stop the rain.

He had NO clue what I was saying.

He again said, "Jesus, no more rain."

As we turned into our neighborhood, it not only stopped raining, but the sun started to shine.

Barrett was laughing in the backseat. I asked him if he was happy, and all he said as he clapped was, "Yea, Jesus, no rain!"

I think he gets it more than I know.