Old prayers from Planet Childhood.
written by Julie R. Neidlinger 5 comments link this postWhen I was a kid, this is what I prayed before I went to sleep:
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
God bless mom and dad and Jacqui and Jerry and Ronna and Janet and Grandma and Grandpa and Grandma and Grandpa and Leland and MacGuire's and everyone else in the whole wide world amen.
I do not know who Leland is. I think he had a beard, but I'm not sure beyond that.
My recollection of the MacGuire's was an older couple who lived in a cabin near the Grand Tetons and had a lot of hummingbird feeders. I don't know that I'm accurately remembering them, beyond being sure about the hummingbird feeders. I'm pretty sure they've passed away since I was really little when this all went down.
This prayer, however, still stays in my head.
A good childhood is like another planet, one with a sweet haze that blankets everything and puts it into a fourth dimension of reality that sticks with a person after they've left. As an adult, I have a vague sense of specifics and an overwhelming sense of there being some kind of added excitement and wonder to the most regular of things.
Favorite books that I know better than to go back and read with my adult, cynical eyes. Favorite vacations, or restaurants*. Bible camp roommates. Visiting missionaries from Africa with exotic wooden toy animals. Exchange students from around the world. Vacations.
And old prayers.
Every once in a while, Leland gets prayed for, despite me not knowing who he is. His name is imprinted in my mind.
On Planet Childhood (if you had a good childhood), everything is big and important and free from context. At least, that's how it is once you leave it.
* The Casa Bonita in Denver had a mythical place in the minds of my sisters and I. We went there during a family reunion. It had a waterfall! Caves! Magic Show! It was mythical. So, a few years back when I was visiting a friend in Denver, I went to it hoping to recapture the joy. I killed it instead. The plates were dirty, the food so-so, the whole place smelled like chlorine from the lame waterfall, and the restaurant was in a strip mall. You can't revisit childhood, and you shouldn't try. Just let it stay sweet in the memory.
Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger 4/11/2008 09:51:00 AM
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5 Comments:
Children look for good, trust inherently, and diminish the bad by nature. When we grow up, we start to look for the bad in things, we diminish the good, and we stop trusting inherently-- usually because somewhere along the way, as we grew, the adults in our life gave us reasons to distrust them and we became wounded and jaded...
Reclaiming that childlike frame of heart starts with trusting God with our whole heart-- something that is not so easy for some of us, particularly when trust with the others in our life has been broken time and again.
So, yeah, when your childhood was 'good' and the adults around you gave you little to no reason to distrust them -- it leads to adults who can hang onto that trusting child like heart.
A poignant lesson that we should listen to our children, be there for them, be solid for them, so their trusting hearts can stay with them for a lifetime.
By 
Andrea, at
11/4/08 10:36
I really love this post.
I mostly agree with Andrea until she says good childhoods lead to trusting, childlike hearts. My didn't! So I really have no reason not to trust God wholeheartedly, but I don't.
The "adults in our lives" are not the only ones who give us reasons to distrust. Kids were the meanest lot! The adults were mostly loving, supportive and complimentary. It was my peers who wounded me the most.
By girlfriday, at
13/4/08 15:42
Wow, yeah, you are absolutely RIGHT, peers/kids did wound...guess I blocked that out :)
Feeling wounded/rejected is tough to overcome, no matter who dealt the blow. Regardless of where it came from--that wounded-ness is a stumbling block, IMO, to true intimacy with Christ, and needs to be renounced in order to reclaim that child-like trusting heart...
By Andrea, at
14/4/08 11:58
I hated that prayer. I went to be bed and lay there wondering what sort of things I would die from before I 'waked' until I got myself into a cold sweat and had to get a drink and fake a cough so my mom would hear me and ask if I needed a cough drop so I could say yes and have an excuse to go hang out with her for a while. I eventually asked if I could just make up my own prayer and of course that was viewed as an exceptionally mature request and I was allowed. Mature, no, scared, yes!! I mean, what kid really beleives enough to think dying in their sleep and going with Jesus would be a good idea. I guess we still don't or we would not cling to medicine to prolong life and wear seatbelts and such, so why do we make kids pray that scary prayer?
By goprairie, at
14/4/08 21:40
goprairie, I agree, that prayer is a bit scary.
We stumbled upon these sweet prayers in a Sunday school flier, or some other publication years ago when our children were still quite small, they are easier to swallow than the 'if I die'...and our boys still recite these three prayers from memory...
Jesus Savior wash away all that I've done wrong today. Make me ever more like you, good and gentle, kind and true.
Thank you Lord for taking care, of me each night and day. I know that you are with me, at work, at rest, at school, at play.
Jesus keep me healthy strong, and give me a life that's long. Help me always trust in you and show you love in all I do.
By Andrea, at
15/4/08 14:51
