Thanksgiving

Kate and I have had some intense discussion this week about Thanksgiving. Here are my favorites:

First, we were talking about how we aren't going home this year for Thanksgiving. "But MOM!", she said, "Grandma makes that special kind of chicken that I like!" I assured her that I too could make turkey, but she wasn't buying it.

Second, I was driving Kate to school when she started talking to me about God:

"Mom, you know when God used to be alive?" she asked. I didn't, but it was early and I thought it best just to play along with a undecided "uh huh."

"Well, when God used to be alive, these people wanted to kill him and so they put him in a room with a big circle thing on it and they crushed him with it and he died. But then, someone moved the circle and he lived again! So, Thanksgiving is when we celebrate that God died, but on Easter, it's for when he was alive again."

To translate for you kid-speak novices, Kate was thinking of that picture in most Bible storybooks with the stone that was rolled in front of the grave and then rolled away by the angel. Somehow, she's turned that into some sort of crushing.

"That's pretty close Kate. Actually, at Easter is when we remember Jesus dying and rising again, so you definitely got that right. But Thanksgiving, it really doesn't have anything to do with God exactly. It's a celebration of when America was founded and being thankful, to God, for the things He provided."

"Oh."

Indeed.

We're giving a whole new meaning to the term "prayer warrior"

Kate and Sam take very seriously their job of praying for Baby Riley, a friend's child who we've been praying for since before he was born 2 months ago. We started praying for Riley on the way to Jo's in the morning, and since have added other things to the list.

I usually ask them what they want to pray for each day. Kate always says "I want to pray for my daddy," and you never know what Sam will say. He's prayed for Daddy, or one of his classmate's newborn baby, etc. Or, sometimes we thank God for Batman. You just never can tell.

Lately, though, the praying has taken a turn from sweet and loving to competitive and loud. They now both want to pray first, I guess, so at the same time, one of them starts (usually Sam tries to get a jump-start on Kate), and the other yells, "NO ME!" and starts to pray too. It's very loud (I said that already, right?) and Sam usually gets upset. He'll say: "MOM! I was praying! Stop Kate! I'm praying now!" Oh my.

I try to reassure them that God hears their prayers no matter how many people are praying. Really, I'm not sure my sanity will take much more praying that early in the morning.

When my friend Beth called yesterday with an update on Riley's surgery, she said that she knew Sam and Kate were Riley's own team of little prayer warriors. I said, "If you only knew the kind of spiritual battle going on over here..."