Part of Parker's nightly bedtime ritual is to say a prayer. Parker really enjoys this. It's a time to reflect on the day and think about the things we're grateful for. Sometimes Parker gets off on a tangent, for example, for the last month she's said "Dear God, thank you for this day, thank you for my Paba...." and then she'll pause and wait for her dad or I to say, "What's a Paba"? To which she responds gleefully, "It has wings on it's nose and flaps on it's toes and a knot on it's toe". This was cute at first but I'm trying to redirect her back to what a prayer should be about.

The other night, Parker started in on a line of questioning beginning with "where is God?". Being that I wasn' t prepared to answer this question in terms a two year old could understand I reverted to some very cliche' answers. I told her that God was in heaven which made her in turn ask where heaven was. I told her it was up in the clouds and that God could see down from there and watch over us. She asked me "what is heaven?". I thought for a moment and thought well, heaven can be different things to different people, perhaps each persons idea of paradise is what they will experience when they are in heaven. So I proceeded to tell Parker that heaven is place you go when you die and it's filled with jolly jumpers where you can have lollipops for every meal. She asked me who was there and I told her other people are there. She then said, "Will you go there with me?" I felt like crying when she said this because the idea of being apart from Parker, even after death broke my heart.....I knew that even though Parker will grow up some day, she will always be my little girl. I had this flash that my heaven very well could be having my Parker as a two year old forever.

After my answers seemed to satisfy her we proceeded to say a prayer. Parker said something to the effect of, "Dear God, thank you for this day....and thank you for heaven and please help us not to die, but if we die we'll go to heaven and there's lots of people there and I can have lollipops and go in the jumpers!". As she said this her eyebrows raised up and she got very excited. I felt a little worried that I hadn't explained things properly, but I didn't know what else to say at the time. Hopefully as she grows she'll accept amendments to the image of heaven I created.