As an aside - It was a strange anniversary celebration - we were still sleep deprived/jet lagged from our long journey home and Dave was not feeling well. For the first time ever since we embraced our sweet daughter, we were going to go out to dinner without our baby - but we were determined to celebrate such a big anniversary. The dinner didn't go too well, the chef inquired if the food was allright, since it went mostly untouched. We returned home early, and at the end of the night Dave went to the ER due to dehydration.....it was an anniversary to remember!
Back to my original point - we know we are blessed! We want our daughters to grow up knowing that they are blessed, and know who to thank for all of their blessings. We want them to know and believe in the God who loved us all before we were born. We bring the girls to church, they were baptized into our faith family and welcomed warmly by our church community. They know that faith is a part of who we are as a family, and not just a weekly commitment. It is part of being in this family - God is central to our family relationships.
Now they are growing older and starting to learn more about the practice of faith. Ballerina and JuneBug received their First Holy Communion this past spring. It was just six days after they lost their paternal grandmother. As a family, we were there on her last day, sitting with her and praying, and celebrating mass and Eucharist in her room. Our friend, a priest, came to offer the mass and very gently, and openly talked about their Nonni moving from the world of being with us, to being with God. As we had spent many weeks in advance talking to them about what was most likely going to be the outcome of Nonni's illness, they were steady, and accepted the news with tears, but gladness that Nonni didn't feel hurt anymore. They had had some experience at my Grandmother's funeral just two months previous, and they saw the importance of our faith community in the final goodbye.
Ballerina, in particular, had been preparing for her First Communion ever since she was about 4 1/2. She eagerly wanted to be more involved in mass. She longed to participate in the way that her parents participate, and when she learned more about the Eucarist, she was SURE she wanted to receive.
When we decided to enter JuneBug into our Religious Education program, it was with much hesitance. Our church does not have a special needs program. More than that, the last year children receive religious instruction is when they are the age JuneBug was - and that is the year they prepare for Confirmation. It wasn't the right time for her to pursue that. A friend, who was also a religion teacher - specifically Ballerina's new religion teacher offered to take JuneBug into her class as a special helper. This was an ideal way, in my mind, for her to get her feet wet with religious instruction outside the home.
I say outside the home, because to me, JuneBug was clearly understanding something about our faith at home. Right from the beginning, she observed and imitated our postures - and if she did not exactly understand what we were doing - she knew it was important. In China we found a Catholic church (rare) and went inside to say a prayer. She joined us on the kneelers and folded her hands like her little sisters. Before a week passed she could be seen with her hands folded at the dinner table, waiting for everyone to sit down and pray before eating. She joined us in each prayer and celebration, and was shyly joyful the day of her baptism.
After the first two classes, Ballerina reported that JuneBug was less "helper" more "student" - and I was fine with that. When a substitute who knew my girls, related to me the following story, I knew I would ask for JuneBug to receive her Communion with her younger sister. The substitute stepped in for 20 minutes to cover for the teacher who needed to talk to a student outside of the classroom. She asked the children to read a paragraph from the chapter they were studying. All the students were asked to take turns. When JuneBug's turn came, the substitute said it was okay, they could move on to Ballerina. Ballerina asked why her sister couldn't read her paragraph. The substitute knew JuneBug couldn't read, and has great difficulty with her speech and she tried to gently explain to Ballerina that she knew JuneBug couldn't do it. Ballerina said "I will help her." Ballerina read each word in the paragraph, one at a time, and JuneBug repeated each word as she went along. This must have gone on for much longer than it takes the most struggling readers to read, but apparently they read the whole paragraph like this while about 25 second graders silently listened. I was so proud of my girls when I heard this story - I teared up instantly and knew that Ballerina was truly showing God's love and compassion. She has a strong sense of justice, and this was her way to stake her sister's claim in this class. With her sister's help, we would be able to prepare her to receive Jesus.
I was so proud of these girls when they dressed in their beautiful white dresses and veils to join their classmates in receiving their first Eucharist. It was that weekend that Songbird started asking if she could go up for a blessing when her sister's received the Eucharist. She knew that this was a big deal, and all of a sudden she decided she would like to be a part of it all.
The funerals, the First Communion - they were all opportunities for us to have more thoughtful conversations about God and faith and why we believe what we believe. This went way beyond our seasonal Easter and Christmas conversations....though definitely built on both of these celebrations!
Since we live our faith at home, not just in church, the girls know their prayers. There are a standard few they know by heart, and then there are times we add petitions from our hearts. I have been thinking of expanding their prayer - and instead of litany of blessings and petitions at bedtime - I wanted them to open themselves up to new intentions and put some of them into our regular prayer vocabulary.
Finding lots of great ideas on Pinterest, has led me to searching for great faith building activities. I found something that, combined with some ideas that were brewing in my mind already, has turned into a great way to expand our prayer life.
We now have "Prayer Sticks"! What? Well, this is what I did: I purchased some large craft sicks. They are a bigger version of popsicle sticks and come in both the 'natural' color and the red/blue/green/yellow variety pack. I got 1 pack of each. On the red sticks, I wrote 5 intentions that have always been a part of our daily prayers - prayers for our family, families and children of adoption, those who are sick - you get the idea. On the Natural colored sticks I wrote a BUNCH of intentions. I wrote down anything that we have prayed for in the past, anything we SHOULD be praying for, and I left a bunch blank for intentions we haven't thought of yet. The petitions include specific names for babies on the way, godparents and godchildren, teachers, friends and classmates, prayers for our religious and political leaders, petitions to help us show each other God's love, help guide us, help us do our very best every day....etc. Finally I wrote THANKFUL prayers on the green sticks. These included prayers of Thanksgiving for the beauty of nature, for the love of family, for our health, for religious freedom and for Jesus' sacrifice. Again, I left some blank for future prayers.
Together with Ballerina, I sat down and made out a framework of how we will use the prayer sticks. For now, this is how we will use these tools to help us be more "prayer" mind-ful. In the morning we will each take a petition stick out of the container and take it as our own petition for the day. When we are going about our day, this petition will be our special prayer. We pray for the intention right then, and keep it in our hearts and on our mind all day. When we share a meal together - usually dinner, but if its breakfast or lunch we can do it then too - we will take a green THANKFUL stick out of the bucket and add it to our prayer before we eat. Around here we pray the "Bless Us Oh Lord, and These Thy Gifts......" grace before meals.
Finally, at bedtime, we each take one stick of each color and after our standard prayers, like the Our Father, we take turns adding the petitions we've drawn. The idea is that after we finish with these intentions, we put the sticks into a seperate bucket so that the other prayers get a chance to be prayed over the next two days. Since there are only one Red sticks per person, they are prayed daily. At any time, of course, we can add a prayer that is not written onto a stick. I'm also encouraging the girls to draw a stick to inspire prayer before we attend mass or pray the rosary.
This is just another way to inspire the girls as to what to say when they "dial God's phone number". We want them to recognize that there are people who need our prayers, and that their prayers are important. We also want them to offer prayers of THANKSGIVING. We want them to know that we need to ask God for guidance, we need to follow God's path, and we will often need to pray to find out what that path is!
So far, so good - I especially like that they each take a petition as their own all day - they have remembered it and pray again at dinner. This has opened a new way for them to practice their faith, and I'm happy that its been a successful tool!
No comments:
Post a Comment