The last couple of nights I’ve been thinking how funny it is that Noah has taught me a lesson about prayer. Every night we say prayers and it goes like this.. “God Bless Nanny, God Bless Papaw Lance, God Bless Grandma, etc. etc.” until he names everyone in our immediate family. If someone has been over at our house recently though, he will start to say their names during prayers. Last week my aunt Pam and uncle Mark and cousin Jordan were here and we were finishing up an order on Jordan’s senior pics (which is scary really b/c I babysat for him!). Every night since then Noah has said “God Bless Pam”.. and he will say it several times. He had a lot of fun with her so she obviously made an impression. I just think it’s funny that he remembers these people and every night he insists that we “bless” them.

It got me thinking, I always pray for people when something comes up. For example, if a friend has a death in the family or a miscarriage or an accident, I will pray for them for a few days and that’ll be that. But I just thought to myself the other night… Why don’t I continue to pray for them? I mean, just because it’s been several months since my friend lost a loved one or a few weeks since my other friend had a miscarriage, doesn’t mean that they’re not still going through it and in need of prayer. Sure, I may have moved on and I still think about them and what they must be going through, but why not continue to pray for them? I feel this pressure to pray for every single person that I know every single time I pray and that’s just not reasonable. I have learned over the years that it’s ok if I happen to think about a person in a casual moment (like doing dishes) and pray for them at that moment and not again when I do my “formal” prayers at bed time. I need to spread it out! I always fall asleep while praying because I have such a long list! I’ve learned over the years that I can talk to God constantly and it’s not like he only makes time for me at night when I’m lying in bed! I can say a little prayer when I see that someone is having a hard time on facebook! Or I can pray for a few people while I’m sitting in Noah’s room waiting for him to fall asleep. There are all kinds of times when I have a quite few seconds and I’ve learned that those are valuable seconds! At night I feel like I should be praying for our world leaders and those struggling with Cancer, Divorce, Loss, etc…. ya know, the “big stuf”! But my little prayers about keeping my sanity while waiting to see if I’m pregnant this time around, or needing help with potty training, or maintaining my sanity with all the things around here I need to get done!.. those are the prayers I say when I’m in the shower, or folding laundry. That is, when I’m not watching Noah swing his golf club around or yelling at him for taking all the Q-tips out of the drawer in the bathroom. Aw, life.. so much to squeeze in and so little time. Our kids teach us a ton of lessons though, don’t they?