I love my kids...

And I love God...

But the truth is that I don't always know how to combine these two elements of my life.  Oh, of course I do my best -- reading stories from the Bible, praying together, asking and answering questions about the nature of our world throughout the regular course of daily life, and even going through the occasional family devotional series together (usually around holiday seasons).  Even so, it can be tough with very small children.  I'm not always sure if spiritual truth is being communicated in a way that is truly meaningful for them.

Case in point:  bedtime prayer.  This has been a ritual with my children at the end of every day since the day on which each individual child was born.  And yet, as my kids have gotten older, it has seemed that the practice has become little more than a brief diversion to the final good-night kiss -- and its significance has been lost in the process.  Every night -- for the past six months -- when I'd ask Elliot if he wanted to pray for anything, he always respond with the formulaic:  "God-please-help-Olivia-Amen."  And that was it.  Even during the times when I would be praying with Elliot (or for Elliot, I should say), he would make monkey sounds... or climb up the wall with his bare feet... or play with my eyebrows... or hum "The Star Spangled Banner" under his breath (and no, I'm not making up any of these examples).

You'd think I would have gotten the point sooner, but it finally dawned on me within the last couple of weeks -- as Elliot's bedtime prayer attention span has seemed to be getting exponentially shorter -- that I really needed to figure out something to help my five-year-old son connect with the idea of prayer.  I had already tried explaining to him that prayer was simply talking to Jesus and that Jesus wanted to hear whatever Elliot might have to say... I had already tried variations on themes, times, places, and positioning... But really, we needed to come up with something drastically different.

And that's how we started singing telegrams to Jesus.

For the last week, Elliot and I have been discovering an amazing form of prayer together.  I really should have thought of it sooner -- as Elliot has been a musical child since his earliest days of verbal communication.  But basically, we just started praying to God in musical form.  Not that it's really anything all that revolutionary or innovative (people have been writing songs to God for millenia).  But it's become something beautiful that I've found myself looking forward to every night since we first discovered it.

At the end of the day, after putting on pajamas and brushing teeth and reading a chapter from a book, Elliot and I climb up into his loft bed together, and we lay down side-by-side on our backs, looking up at the ceiling.  And then we start singing to Jesus.  I'll start with singing a line like, "Thank you God for the beautiful weather..." and Elliot will jump in with the second line, "Thank you God for my friend Dennis and the marbles he let me play with at school..."  And we'll go on and on like this for three or four minutes.  The tune is not familiar -- we invent it as we go -- and the words do not always fit a clever rhythmic scheme or rhyming pattern.  But the thoughts expressed in these songs are genuine heart-felt reflection on the day behind us and the day ahead of us.  And I'm really surprised to hear my boy's spiritual insight and heart of worship for God.

I realize, of course, that I'll have to actively seek to keep things fresh and not allow us to get into any ruts -- even if it might be a creative rut -- but I've been encouraged to have this intermingling of two of my great loves in life over the last week or so.  I thought I'd pass along my recent experiences to anyone else who might have kids (now or someday).  And if anyone else has discovered any other unique ways of helping connect kids and God, I'd love to hear about it as well...