Toddler Prayers

About four and a half years ago, we heard a message at church one Sunday about the persistent widow. At the time Mark and I were trying to get pregnant, and I felt the message of persistence in prayer applied directly to our situation. Our church at that time was inviting people up every Sunday after the service to be prayed for, so Mark and I decided that every time prayer was offered, we would take it.

At first we were asking for prayer to conceive, and eventually we started asking for prayer for the adoption process. Although we ended up leaving that church when Isaac was about 10 months old, it was a joy to share the process leading up to his birth and adoption with that community who had prayed with us so faithfully.

After leaving that church, we spent about a year wandering--not really finding a church to settle in. So when we got everything in place last summer for a second adoption, we didn't have a consistent community of people praying for us. At some point we remembered how wonderful it was to have people praying regularly for us while we waited for Isaac, and we decided, at the very least, we needed to start praying regularly as a family for God to bring us another child.

So each night at dinner, the three of us hold hands to thank God for our meal, and we ask God to bring a new baby into our family. Only a day or two after we started doing this, Isaac would start saying, "Baby, baby," every time we sat down at the dinner table. We would ask, "Would you like us to pray for a baby?" and he would say, "Yeah." When we prayed together at other times, he would often start saying "Baby, baby," during the prayer.

I'm not sure how much Isaac understands about what it means to pray for a baby. But I'm counting this as genuine prayer. Many of Isaac's friends are getting little brothers and sisters right now, and I think he's ready to be a big brother. Some day we'll be able to tell our second child how Big Brother Isaac prayed for them, even before we knew who they were.