Each week my daughter (she is 2.5 yrs) stays with me and we have some wee constants, things I am deliberately forming to be traditions. One of those things is prayer. We say the lords prayer together each day at midday and pray just before bed too.
Bed time we do a little version of the examen together. BTW if you don't know what the examen is I would highly recommend it. There’ an image at the bottom of this post. Mainly we focus on the ‘gratitude‘ bit, going through her day.
I never realised how many things there were to be thankful for!!!
We always start the same way; ’thank you Jesus for another day, thank you for a lovely mummy and daddy’, after this it is a free for-all! We are thankful for; friends, nursery, swings, squirrels, squirty cream, playdough, pyjamas, Frozen (obviously), scooters, spaghetti carbonara, daddy's beard, glitter glue, and biscoff, oh yes amen, we are very thankful for biscoff! 🙌🏼
It might be a bit silly for me to pray like this on my own each night, ok probably very silly. But when I considered her prayers and compared them with my own level of thankfulness I know which one I prefer... more importantly I know which God prefers! There is something wonderfully pure and humbling about being thankful.
Appreciate the little things.
Gratitude does something in our soul, it loosens our striving and pride in our own achievement. It relaxes us in to the peace of God’s provision, acknowledging all the wonderful things in life as an act of God's Love for us. I am not saying working hard is not important, quite the contrary. However, it is much healthier and true to see all of life’s goodness as an act of His grace or as the Old Testament would say, ‘His loving Kindness’. That even if I have worked hard for some of these things I am using the body/mind He has given to me for His glory.
Being a dad and praying with my daughter I have noticed in my own evening examen prayers I tend to spend sooo much more time in gratitude. Saying thanks to MY heavenly dad for all the amazing blessings; my daughter, relationships, my company, my church, my mates, my ministering, my mates church, the house I live in, my body, my mind, His love, oh wow His love!! Pizza, bbq ribs, the roar of one of my cars (yes I am a petrol head!), sitting around the firepit with friends, coffee and of course biscoff. Thank you Jesus for biscoff🙌🏼
Yeah my prayers are a bit more cheesy (oh yeah thank you Jesus for cheese, I love cheese!) but they are much, much more grateful. As a result I am more mindful of the source to all this goodness, Jesus!
So maybe your like me and can thank Jesus for the ‘big stuff’ but sometimes miss the everyday wonder. If so can I this little post and my daughters gratitude encourages you to be a little more thankful. I hope this little area that God has taught me by being a dad encourages you to say THANK YOU JESUS!
If you have a little one and don't pray together then I encourage you to start! If you don't have any kids then I encourage you to become a little more like one. I seem to remember someone once saying something about that..
"Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven..." - Jesus - Matt 18:3
As always I would love to hear from you and please feel free to share this post using the 3 little dots at the top of the page 😄
Big love
Joss ♥️
P.s. There are so many great things I have learned by becoming a dad so I am going to celebrate them here. Along with other things Gods talking to me about so sign up to get the odd email or follow me on Instagram to not miss out.
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