Praying for things you shouldn’t pray for.
You have never done this. You wake in the morning and talk to bluebirds and enjoy a warm cup of coffee and a bit of Old Testament. Your days are like Guideposts articles. Nice. Kind. Never full of what I am going to admit today.
There is something none of us should pray for, but some of us do.
OK here it is:
Sometimes I pray that my friends who were blessed with a naturally easy kid will be blessed with a difficult second child.
Not all the time. I don’t pray that for everyone’s second kid, just the friends who are cocky and think that it is there tremendously awesome parenting skills that has made there kids go to bed at 6 every night without fights.
Do you have friends like this? Their first kid is a dream! That kid taught herself to read at the age of two. She feeds the homeless on the weekend. She brushes her teeth just “because,” not after lengthy negotiations. She always shares her toys and last Christmas told her parents, “I don’t need gifts, the gift of your love is enough for me.” She eats broccoli without being bribed and thinks that books are better than television.
Which is great, unless your friends take credit for it. If they’ve done very little to shape that naturally easy going child and yet still brag in a way that makes you feel like a complete loser of a parent, I think it’s OK to you perhaps pray that their second child is a little more difficult.
Do you know this child?
We say “spirited,” not “difficult.”
Our kids have a blood pact that they won’t fall asleep in the car.
Our kids broke us down over a series of late night maneuvers that eliminated our ability to get the sleep necessary to maintain rational thought.
Our kids broker “vegetable deals” like investment bankers. They are like Goldman Sachs of brussel sprouts. They always win and I always feel like we lose at the dinner table.
Our kids are awesome and when someone else with a calm kid used to give me crazy advice it used to frustrate me.
Until I started praying their kid would be born double fisting sharpies, with a hunger for hallway walls and toddler graffiti.
That probably makes me a horrible Christian.
I can accept that.
