1.12.2017

On Prayers with Children

"Jesus, tender Shepard, hear me,
bless this little child tonight.
Through the darkness be down near me
Keep me safe 'til morning's light...."

Dear Younger (read: inexperienced) Self:

When you start to tack on blessings at the end of your children's night time prayers, keep it simple. Please just trust me here. Your time becomes far more valuable (and your patience quite a bit shorter) and well, you see, if you start adding pet names it might go something like this:

God bless Daddy, Mommy, Aidan, Madeline, Lily, Liam, Solomon, Leroy, Stripsies, Storm, Oreo, Sparkles, insert the names of 6, nope 12, chickens, wait, make that 24......no wait.....

And then, oops, Sparkles, the fighting fish, went all kamikaze and jumped ship.....out of the tank (we are guessing) and well, I'm pretty sure the cat ate him....because there were no remains.....not anywhere. And then Oreo, well, that abscess was no joke and while his jaw got bigger and bigger, to the point of caricature, his body withered away until your kid found him stiff as a board (and the only thing you could think to say, but fortunately knew not to, was "Well, I guess the vet was right after all!" but then there was that constant reminder every single night that his name was missing). And then, a chicken will die, and then another, and you will subtract their names and with those down, you pick up a couple more rabbits and Messi and Morgan quickly become a family of six, but instead of keeping them all you only keep two, so while you added Messi and Morgan and Ham and Baggio and Ranger and whatever the heck the orange one was named, you will have to cut a few from the roster when they get sold off. And then Leroy will break the Dish and run away with the Spoon and while we are going to pretend he did not get eaten by some bigger animal and is now just shacked up at a better home, after months go by, we scratch him off the list as well, and then those 6 cute peeps are now 58! And who names ALL 58 CHICKENS?! I know you think you will but I assure you, you get over that when you realize you can't tell those six white silkies apart at all! NOT EVEN A GUESS! And get this, you hatched them! All. By. Yourself! (Well, you know, with the help of those hens.) But you can't even tell which is which! Oh, and while we are at it.....you know those three black roos you thought you couldn't live without? Larry, Moe and Curly? Well, don't add them to the prayer either because they do MUCH better at someone else's farm! I know, I know, so hard to imagine now. But one day you will speedily gather up six thoroughly unnamed chickens, throw them in some make-shift cage and just haul them away to someone else's house, without a second thought at all......BECAUSE YOU HAVE WAY TOO MANY GOSH DARN ANIMALS!

So please, when you start tacking on all those names, just stop. Ask yourself: is this REALLY the road you want to travel?

(No! The answer is NO! Put away that quizzical look and shake your head back and forth because it is unequivocally, without a shadow of a doubt, N-O!)

"God bless Daddy, Mommy, Aidan, Madeline, Lily, Liam, Solomon, all of our Pets and all of our friends and loved ones (See? It even works with people!)......help me be a good child, praise in Jesus's name. A-frickin-MEN!"