Joaquim and I have made quite a team of ourselves, babysitting. It's been fun and usually we watch two little ones named Liza and Jake. Liza is a little over two years old, and Jake is 7 or 8 months (although he is huge and wears 24 month clothes!) The family is not a Christian family, and that is very apparent just from being in their home. I browsed their bookshelves one day and was just grieved by all the self-help books and explorations of mystic and "spiritual you" sorts of premises. Last Friday, Gus (the dad) was telling us that they went to a pumpkin patch at a local church, and he went out of his way to explain that the ONLY reason they went to the church was for the pumpkin patch. Ok, message received.
So we watch their sweet kids, play games, read books, coax mashed turkey baby food into a laughing mouth and a wobbly head, and it's a great time. The kids love us, and we are quite fond of them. Usually Joaquim takes charge of "baby Jake" (though he still makes me change all the diapers...this will not be true of our future children, but he hasn't realized that yet...) and gets him changed, feeds him his bottle, waits till he falls asleep on his shoulder, and puts him to bed. (Yes, it is super cute.) Liza and I are buddies, and I put her to bed.
This last time, she wanted me to lay down with her a bit (she wasn't super tired, so whatever needed to happen to calm her down, happened!) There we were, I was singing her some songs to go to sleep, and she was starting to close her eyes after a few books read in a calm, quiet voice, and then lights out. So just before I left the room, I said "ok, let's pray."
She looked at me and said, "play?"
And at that moment, my heart broke into a million pieces.
This sweet, blonde, curly haired, skinny, smiley girl who knows all her colors and can sort of count and has memorized the authors name of her favorite book and always likes to flip to the back cover to see her picture...this precious little one doesn't even have the word "PRAY" in her advanced-for-a-two-year-old vocabulary.
So I prayed for her to sleep well, to be safe and healthy, and that she would come to know the Lord someday. And maybe next time we'll talk about Jesus.
