Our Little Prayer Boxes

So...yesterday morning, the hubby had a pretty important conference call, and since he’s still working entirely from home, that meant I needed to keep my little rascals pretty quiet for a chunk of time, as opposed to the low background roar of most days. 

Luckily, I’d been gathering up some materials for a little project to tackle when the time was right. We got the idea from our church’s Staycation Bible School that we’ve been streaming at home, as time allows.

Prayer Boxes :)

Made out of decorated Kleenex boxes.

Easy peasy, and these days, my kiddos have been loving any project that involves cutting, gluing and/or taping. They don’t need more than that to be totally hunky dory happy.

So we camped out upstairs with whispers only, and spent a happy hour making these.

To be honest, it feels like divine inspiration that we made these boxes to have on hand right now. Because I feel like I could write and tuck quite a few folded prayers into them these days.

I’ve never in my left spent such a contended and lengthy stretch of time (nearly five months, now), in a happy cocoon with my family, but with such an underlying juxtaposition of worry.

Of course, I’m grateful to always keep in perspective our family blessings. They are bountiful. We have food and a beautiful home and our health and sanity and work and happy babies who have weathered this all so very well.

But it’s hard sometimes not to think of the strange future ahead, and most of my worry these days has been centered around the idea of school, and what the heck it will look like in five week’s time.

Today, I just had a particularly concentrated dose of thinking about it all because I had conversations with a couple of mother friends within our school district—and, of course, following the nationwide news doesn’t help.

So. I might be tucking a handful of prayers into my kiddos boxes, and I think I’ll also get a particular bit of delight from seeing what they put in there, themselves.

For example, one of Chicklet’s that she asked me to transcribe yesterday:

“Dear God, always always help mommy and daddy to do good birthdays and fun stuff, and stand strong.”

The “stand strong” bit is a reference to this year’s VBS theme: prayer helps us to stand strong. And, man, is it beautiful to see how that message is sticking in her brain.

Or this beautiful gem that came next:

“Dear God, please help all the people in the world to love one another and stand strong.”

I love this girl and her heart.

Even when it weighs heavy—in light of our little fox friend’s demise—and I get an insight into her stressed and worried. Like with this prayer, which is the first she brought to me yesterday:

“Dear God, please help me to not die for good.”

It hurts to see that one because it’s so hard to ease a little one’s mind of this particular worry, right? But it also shows that she’s been thinking about something the hubby and I talked through with her a couple days ago (again, after the fox)—which is: when we have our faith in God, we never truly die for good.

Heavy, heavy stuff for my babies.

But I’m grateful for openings to these conversations—and perhaps an outlet for them to express some of it.

And I’m also grateful that this heavy stuff hasn’t been the focus of our days. It might be background noise, but family fun and craziness is still front and center.

Hope you all are ready for a healthy and sane weekend.

Over and out.