What My Three Year Old Taught Me About Prayer

My baby turns three today. She is a constant joy, even while I am all kinds of tired and having trouble remembering what day it is (this whole pandemic situation hasn’t helped with that). 

It seems appropriate to reflect today on the ways being Noelle’s mom has helped me see God’s heart for us, his children, more clearly.  I don’t think being a parent is a necessary component of understanding these things, but I believe God uses every circumstance in our lives to make himself known to us.  I am thankful he has given Russell and I the gift of her inclusion in our family and used that hoped-for circumstance to reveal his love for me in more depth.

Noelle cut her first tooth around 5-6 months, and I remember feeling so proud. It struck me as odd since I never thought pride as a response to anything unless it was some kind of intentional uphill battle requiring superhuman willpower.  Noelle didn’t consciously try to cut a tooth, she was just growing the way she was intended to.  I think God is delighted and proud of his children when we are who we are created to be, when we learn and grow even in the most ordinary of ways. It reminds me that, as the Creator, every facet of our existence is of interest to him, not just things that we have categorized as having particular spiritual significance.  Seeing God through the lens of a proud parent has been, for me, healing, since for a good chunk of my life I imagined God being constantly annoyed with and disappointed in me for not being as mature as others in my faith and the way I lived it. 

When Noelle (or probably any baby) is upset, it doesn’t help to tell them why they shouldn’t feel that way, or to tell them they’re really quite lucky and need to think about their blessings.  They need presence – their parent to be with them while they cry.  When older children or adults suffer, I think we forget about the ministry of presence in our haste to get the suffering person to say or agree to things that will reassure us, or we try to help by telling them it could be worse or is worse for others, that their suffering is God’s plan, or a myriad of other things that may or may not be true but are certainly not helpful in that situation.  I think it just gets harder to be present once all parties are capable of speaking.  Jesus knew how to be present.  When he met with Mary and Martha and they told him of the death of Lazarus, he wept.  He didn’t skip over being present in their grief even though he was the only person who truly knew that things really were going to be okay. 

As Noelle has grown, I have found myself in a strange place where often I understood what she wanted without her having to ask, but knowing I needed to encourage her to communicate her needs more directly.  Prayer is something I have often struggled with since all kinds of disparate but true things about it rattle around in my head and I’m not always sure what to think about the best way to pray.  God is omniscient, so wouldn’t it make more sense to just let him do what he thinks is best?  Teaching Noelle to ask for what she needed taught me to think about prayer differently.  I want to have a relationship with my child, so I need her to learn how to communicate with me.  Even though I might already know what she needs in an individual circumstance, for the sake of our long-term relationship I need to encourage her to ask for herself. That dynamic helped illustrate for me something a friend said when we were discussing prayer just after I miscarried. After praying for a baby and praying that we wouldn’t finally get pregnant just to miscarry and praying for that miscarriage not to happen, praying for that miracle, I couldn’t understand what the point was in praying at all.  My friend said she figured prayer was more about relationality than results, and even then I agreed, but I understood better after having Noelle and realizing that I needed to teach her how to ask.  She needs to recognize her own needs and to communicate them, both for her own growth and for the maturation of her relationship with me (and others).  I think God wants us to have the self-knowledge to identify our needs or wants or frustrations and to communicate them to him. 

Happy birthday Noelle!  We thank God for you.