a child's prayer (reprise)

I wrote late last year about the evolution of Caleb's prayers. To update, they have since regressed to irreverent goofiness, which is unfortunate considering how sweet they once were. But he's a bouncy 3 1/2-year-old, so things are bound to change again soon.

Around the time that Caleb's prayers first began to be so sincere, Garrett's became more automatic and repetitive. He'd say them without thinking, and every one sounded exactly the same. Just as repeatedly, we'd encourage him to be more thoughtful when he prayed, and eventually he agreed that that was a good idea.

He started by mentioning all of the things that he'd done during the day, followed by the things he was looking forward to. Sometimes he added random thoughts he'd had throughout the day. And then he began adding flowery adjectives.

A few weeks ago a member of the Primary presidency approached me after church to tell me that Garrett had said one of the prayers in Sharing Time that day and how impressed she was with how he did. I agreed that he'd recently become more verbose when he prayed, adding that his new favorite word to use as he did so was "wonderful."

"YES!" she replied, nearly jumping out of her shoes, which made me wonder just how many times he'd used the word "wonderful" in that particular prayer. If it was anything like what he says at home, it was probably a lot.

Here is an example of a typical Garrett prayer:

Dear Heavenly Father, Thank you for the wonderful day, and we had a wonderful time at the playground, and I love to see my friends, and we had a wonderful dinner, and I really want to get money for the school store, and help me have a wonderful sleep, oh, and the assembly at school was really fun, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Pretty wonderful, don't you agree?