As I mentioned prayer in my last post

This is how I've been starting my days recently,

O God!
Educate these children.

These children are the plants of Thine orchard,
the flowers of Thy meadow,
the roses of Thy garden.

Let Thy rain fall upon them;
let the Sun of Reality
shine upon them with Thy love.
Let Thy breeze refresh them
in order that they may be
trained,
grow
and develop,
and appear in the utmost
beauty.

Thou art the Giver.
Thou art the Compassionate.

I wish I could speak Persian. I could learn it phonetically in the Persian (it sounds beautiful!) but I'm not good with languages and with a prayer I should know what I'm saying don't you think? So I sing it with my own little tune that was inspired by Joe Crone but isn't quite the same. It is a lovely springtime prayer and I am surrounded by the images in it daily, so it comes back to me constantly.

I used to have a hard time with saying prayers aloud. I found it made me self conscious and then I got used to doing it with my kids and I LOVE saying prayers with them. We say bedtime prayers and a blessing on our food before we eat. I STILL get self conscious about saying prayers aloud if there are other adults around though. I think I can trace it back to my mom (moms are always to blame you know!). I used to come back from Sunday school singing children's hymns, loudly, off key...and I often could only remember half. I was like a skipping record. My mom would go bonkers from it after awhile.

So I ended up feeling this self consciousness about not doing it "right" cause, I still forget words, and I still sing off key. But not with children.

Motherhood has taught me there's no "right time" other than NOW to do these things. You can't wait til you've perfected something to share it as a parent. You just have to trust yourself that doing it is what is right, and that mistakes will be forgiven...

Which is really what everything in our lives is about isn't it, especially prayer and our relationship with God?

But I'm still going to blush furiously when I say a prayer other adults can hear!


Oh and here is Nature Girl's favorite prayer - a more rockin version than she learned in class