I hadn’t really gotten around to doing pre-meal prayers with L.. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I figured that around 18 months or so, we’d start. I mean, when he actually eats with the rest of the family, he witnesses prayer time, but breakfast is casual here (i.e. everyone grabs their own breakfast, says their own prayers, and we zip out of the house to work or the bus stop or some other distant location), and lunch is usually L. eating in his high chair while I surf the Internet at the table clean the kitchen. So all that to say that… I just hadn’t gotten around to teaching L. to fold his hands and pray before we eat.

But he was too smart for me.

He’s been watching us. He sees us fold our hands and bow our heads when we sit down around the dinner table together. He notices that C. takes a minute to do the same before munching his morning waffles. And he recently decided that he was not going to be left out of our family’s prayer life any more.

One evening, as he sat popping peas into his mouth, he suddenly stopped, put both hands together in a cute little prayer-pose, and started repeating his favorite word — “Eh.” — which can mean anything from, “Hey, look at me!” to “What is that?”. In this case, I think it meant, “Let us pray.” And he would not stop until he was acknowledged.

“Eh. Eh. Eh. Eh. Eh! Eh! Eh! EH! EH! EH!!!“

Finally, I got it. “Oh, you want to pray? Okay, let’s pray. Dear God, thank you for these peas. Amen.”

L. got a very pleased and satisfied look on his face and went back to eating.

And then, about 6 peas later, he did it again. Folded his hands and launched into “Eh”s.

So we prayed again.

And then again.

And then again when the chicken nuggets came out.

Ever since that day, when L. realized he could pray, too, it’s been happening quite frequently. Mostly, he does it in his high chair, at intervals of approximately every 5-10 bites of food. But he also stops his playing to pray, suggests praying in the car, invites me to join him in prayer at the grocery store.

He has, without even realizing it, picked up on the Biblical command to pray continually.

It’s cute, yea adorable, even. And I love that he wanted to be part of this aspect of our family’s life. I know he doesn’t yet realize what prayer is all about. But he knows it’s something we do, he knows it’s related to the things we do, he knows we do it on our own and when we’re together. One thing he doesn’t know, however, is that God is using him to teach me a couple lessons:

1. I need to keep in mind the “pray without ceasing” exhortation. I might start the day off okay, but by mid-afternoon, I can tend to move into handle-everything-myself mode. I’ve been trying to use L.’s little “Eh”s as prompts for my own prayers — to reconnect with God right then and there.

2. There’s so much to be thankful for. When L. is ready to pray, I usually stop and say a little “thank you” prayer for whatever we’re doing. “Thank you for our car.” “Thank you for these groceries.” “Thank you for a comfortable house.” How often do I forget to say “thank you” for all these blessings? Too often.

3. God has an amazing way of using our children to shape us. I recently finished Gary Thomas’ book, Sacred Parenting, and can highly recommend it to all you parents out there. The subtitle of the book says: How Raising Children Shapes Our Souls. So true. It’s not a parenting how-to book. But it did give me a lot to think about. Thomas explores the many ways our children teach us about ourselves, about sin, about God, about love. Good stuff. And as I watch L. start to discover the basics of prayer, I see one more way in which God uses my kids to draw me to Him.