S. O. S.

AA's birthday party was Friday night. Kit Kat tried to stay up and "hang" with the older girls. She did a pretty good job but finally fell asleep around 11:00. Of course she was up at 6:45 the next morning. Which meant that she was incredibly fussy all day Saturday.

She cried and whined all day long. She finally came downstairs around 3:oo in the afternoon, crying because "Nobody will play with me. They all want to play school and I don't want to play school and now I have nobody to play with." I told her that she needed to get her blankey and lie down in my bed. She stomped off, wailing the whole way to my bed. When I checked on her, she was sitting straight up, crying, because, "I'm not tired. I don't want to lay down. I just want somebody to play with me. And I don't want to play school. We always play school."

So I sat down with her, said a really quick prayer for patience, and gently explained to her that being a good friend means that sometimes we play what our friends want to play.

You can imagine that didn't go over very well.

So I suggested that we say a little prayer and ask Jesus to help us be a good friend.

You CANNOT imagine the drama, crying, gasping, and genuine sobbing that this produced. It was like I opened the floodgates. "Everytime I talk to God or Jesus, nobody ever talks back to me. (Sobbing). If I lose something and I pray to help me find, I still can't find it! (More sobbing!) I don't feel any different after I ask God to help me. He never talks back! (Gasping for breath). He never listens."

Gulp.

I just wanted to scoop her in my arms and rock her like a baby. How do you explain to an overly dramatic 5 year old that God "does too!" listen to her prayers. She has always been my little Prayer Warrior. I have always said that I would want to be KitKat's friend because she prays for her friends by name every night. And if I have a friend who is expecting a baby, that unborn baby is also prayed for every night.

I held her and asked God for some quick guidance. She wanted answers and she wanted them now! I told her that God ALWAYS listen to her prayers and eventhough we might think he isn't answering our prayers, He always hears them and He does answer them, just not always right then and not always the way we think that He should. I told her that as she got older, she'd learn how to "listen" to God. I explained to her that God gave us the Bible and it tells us everything God wants us to know.

I have no idea if she understood what I had just said. My heart burned with passion to "reach" her.

She simply looked at me and asked, "Does that mean I have to go play school?"

Um.


I'm STILL speechless.

Half the problem is that I still have some of those same questions that she has. But I suppose I've learned to accept that I'll never know all of the answers while I'm on this side of Heaven. But I know that one day I'll get to ask him all of my "why" questions. I've certainly had my fair share of "dry spells" where I feel like God isn't listening and I "don't feel any different" after I pray to Him. But my faith keeps me going back to Him. I know He listens. I know He loves me. I know He hurts with me.

I just want my KitKat to know it too!