Let the little ones come to me...

Ella is in a very spiritually interested and open place right now and I have to say I'm loving it. It's been my prayer since I was pregnant that she would come to know Christ at a young age and walk with Him for a lifetime. Those words almost sound like one long word to me because I've prayed them so many times. So, though I know it won't all be smooth sailing, I'm loving seeing her interest in God explode!

We've been having "family night" once a week for a while now and she and I do her devotional book most days after school. She's been asking questions about the trinity and heaven and what God looks like:) when she was talking about what God looks like she said "does he look like a ghost? They say he's all white and glowy."  Ha!!

At family night we do/read/talk about some spiritually focused thing, read/write letters to our sponsored kids and pray for them, and pick a new memory verse to work on. Ella still loves the method of writing a verse on a whiteboard and erasing a word at a time until we know the whole thing. She's been a good memorizer since we started verses a long time ago but we'd only do them occassionally. She's been begging to do more so we've upped it to one a week lately. Why not lean into what she's interested in? ESPECIALLY WHEN IT'S THE BIBLE!!???

She's also such a reader now that she's been asking to read out of our bibles and learning how to look up books and verses in the Bible. So, I took her on a "date" last week to buy her own "big kid Bible."  She was SOOO happy. She spent a long time deciding and she settled on one because it was called a "backpack bible." She said " Mom! That means I can take it in my backpack and even read it on the bus! This is amazing!" SO cute! I casually mentioned to her that not all kids would be interested in it (I wanted to give her some warning) but she didn't care:)

Well, I didn't realize how serious she was. We had family night tonight and when we started talking about our verse over dinner, I thought "oh we haven't practiced together that much this week and it's a longish one so we'll probably need another week to learn it."  But, I asked "do you guys remember our verse?" And Ella said "Hebrews 11:6..." And quoted it quickly and perfectly. What? I was shocked! My jaw dropped and I asked Chris if he'd been working on it with her but he was as shocked as I was. She was smiling and giggling at our being dumbfounded and then after we told her how amazed we were, she told us her secret. "Mom, I've been finding it in my Bible everyday on the bus and practicing. In the afternoons I work on 2 Corinthians 5:17." What??? Cue heart melting. Needless to say I started crying and hugged her forever. I told her she won't totally understand til she's older why I'm so proud but to trust me, earnestly seeking God (Heb 11:6) is worth it. I donKt want my kids to do spiritual things to make me happy but Ella's interest seems genuine and mostly motivated by her own interest and curiosity. Praying her relationship with God grows and can be her foundation in tough times. Love her!!