Mother prayers

You who have been safe your whole life, you children yet to meet the evil of this world, you're sassy and free. I am learning what a child of 7, 8, 9 is like without scars. You believe in those big hands of Grandpa's - they would protect you, they would threaten anyone who threatened you.

You don't know that evil is insidious. It comes dressed in friend's clothing, it comes in the shape of your heroes, it comes along with love and it comes along with joy. It is a silent companion, a shadow like a panther creeping closer when those big hands aren't around to protect you.

You dream when you are alone. I don't know what dreams fill your little head, but I know they aren't nightmares. I know your nightmares, and they aren't of people you love turning evil, or of being awoken in the night by a terrible face that used to show only love. Your nightmares are amorphous - lightening storms and monsters. But when you wake, I can comfort you. You haven't wet the bed in fear. You don't hide your nightmares from me, afraid I'll discover the truth.

And maybe life can be as simple as growing up and falling in love and living with joy. It is the hope of mothers everywhere - that their children have a happy life. Do some mothers dream of their children having a childhood just like theirs? I pray you have the joy of siblings, the love of parents, the wings for your dreams - but not the torment and the secrets and the caustic burn of wrongdoing in the night that feels as though it somehow leaked through the innocence of your own little soul.

I pray that when someone says they love you, they really do. I pray that when someone says they'll always be there for you, they will be there. I pray you never face a turncoat or a frenemy or a two-faced liar. I hope you never discover one of those amongst your friends. I pray you keep your innocence, that the world doesn't rip it from you with the truth that evil is here along with good. I hope you can watch from the sidelines when pain is afoot. I pray you are His, and hedged about, and free and believing and gullible and naïve.

Be the shining face that believes in the power of good. Be the innocent soul that encourages and gathers groups to carry out your big dreams. Be the kind voice that speaks of Christ's love, unadulterated by the knowledge of exactly what His love has saved us from.

Be that kind of person.

Don't be me.