Who knew?

Tonight I discovered that my son LISTENS to me. Who knew? My sweet boy is nearly 3 and, as most parents know, rarely seems to listen to the important (and good stuff) stuff. Sure, he's picked up some of the not-so-good, like Daddy's favorite expressions when driving in traffic. But the really core of who my husband and I are and what we believe? Nah. We thought it was above his head and he had tuned us out. 

I need to go back a few days so that some of this makes sense. We recently started attending a different church and they invited us to go to a breakfast for families who had recently had a new baby. At this breakfast on Saturday, the children's coordinator spoke about how parents sharing their faith had a greater impact on their children than any program of the church. This struck a hug chord with me because, as much as we believe, we haven't been great about consistently attending church since the one we tried to help start failed. 

One of the stories shared at the breakfast was that of a father who blessed his daughter every night before bed using the same scripture (Numbers 6:24-26) from about 2 years old until she left for college. When he and his wife dropped the daughter off at college they had a plan: say goodbye in the dorm room, grab each other's hand, walk out to the car without looking back. The plan worked except they hadn't planned on the familiar voice calling out, "Mom! Dad!" as they reached their car. You see, their daughter had run after them. Why? Because she wanted, needed her father to bless her as he had every night for so many years.

At the end of the story, I was in tears. I want that for both of my kids. I want them to know that I love them and that I love God and that I pray His richest blessings on and for them. How do I even begin? At this same breakfast, the church gave us beautiful scrapbooks to keep track of our kids' faith journey. One of the pages of the scrapbook contains several scripture-blessings and they asked us to pick one for our children. I chose Ephesians 3:17-19. "And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."

Ever since Saturday, I have said this blessing over my children. Tonight my son said 3 words back, albeit not in the right places, "power of Christ". My husband and I asked if he knew who Christ is. "Jesus is Christ." Woah. He DOES listen. And what's more, he wanted to know more. We explained that Jesus is God's son and that he was sent to save us. He then asked for. Jesus book for a bedtime story. 

We have MANY books that are Bible stories but only maybe 5 about Jesus himself. Most of those are about Christmas. So of course the first one we found was VeggieTales' Away in the Manger, with Junior Asparagus singing. As soon as my son saw it, he exclaimed, "It's a Jesus and Bob book!" Clearly our work has just begun but at least we are headed in the right direction.