Cultivating A Heart Of Thankfulness, Just Like A 3-year-old

JUDAH'S SHIRT SAYS IT ALL

After 25 years of raising wee lads and lasses, I still have things plenty of things to learn, observations to make and new insights to glean when it comes to child rearing. There's a bunch of reasons for this, I imagine. One of them is the uniqueness of each of our children and what each one brings to the table in terms of personality, energy, behaviors, skills and other traits. 

Judah, our resident 3-year-old, is a little guy who I would describe as irrepressible. He has this unquenchable fire to live life to its fullest. And what I love about him is how it's spilling over into his budding understanding of God and Jesus. He absolutely loves church. A couple of months ago I walked into the bedroom he shares with about 20 brothers 5 brothers to get him out of bed. Here's our conversation:

Judah: "What day is it?"

Me: "Sunday."

Judah: "It's Sunday?"

Me: "Yeah, Sunday."

Judah: "Yay! It's church day! I love Sunday!"

Haha! I love that about him. He also loves to pray. When it's dinnertime he likes to pray for the meal before I do and his prayers are, well, sincere. He's always so thankful when he prays and it's such a good reminder for me to cultivate a heart of thankfulness. God is truly good and I am blessed immeasurably. My prayers should reflect this. In some of his dinnertime prayers he's thanked God for his Lightning McQueen potty seat, going potty like a big boy, his toys and other things. But hey, I just appreciate the fact he's thankful.

A few months ago I shot some video of his bedtime prayer. You can find the video here: Prayer video

Even though it was June and warm outside and we hadn't had snow in months, apparently snow was on Judah's mind because he was STILL thankful for it. Isn't that cool? How often do we thank God for things He has done in our loves that are in the distant, let alone near, past. And I love how nothing is too inconsequential for Judah to be thankful about. Yes, it's kind of silly and cute and everything, but to me it's a reminder that the Lord's many blessings should not go unmentioned. 

Here's a really, really close transcript of Judah's prayer, as best as I could understand it:

"Thank you for this God and thank you for this beautiful day and for a lot of friends and the snow wars and the snow and all the friends. And thank you for this God and thank you for this beautiful day in the grass and watching Paw Patrol and video games and Super Smash Bros and Infinity and Cars video game and Mario Cart, Amen!"