Lily Put the Neighbor's Beagle on Our Prayer List

The list is on the back of a hymn sheet from August, since I'm the one who prints them and there's always a stack in the van. It hangs under a magnet shaped like a peach that Lily got at the farmers' market. We started it so we'd pray for people by name instead of saying "bless everyone we love" and hoping that covered it. There's no pen on a string, so whoever writes grabs one off the counter.

Two Sundays ago Lily, who is eight and has opinions about the order of things, took the pen off the counter and wrote DUKE at the bottom. Duke is the neighbor's beagle. He's about thirteen and he'd been to the vet. She'd heard that over the fence, apparently, and nobody had asked her to do a thing about it.

How do you start a family prayer list with kids?

Ours began in the spring with six names and no system at all, which I'd call a bad start if it hadn't worked. Emma was on it because she was in Provo and I miss her, a boy on Caleb's team was on it because his family is moving in November, and then Grandma and Grandpa Pearson and Hannah's shifts and for a couple of weeks in April Ben's ear infection, until it cleared up and somebody crossed it off.

A scrap of paper is plenty, as long as it's where you'll walk past it and the kids are the ones writing and crossing out. When Caleb is the one who says the names out loud at dinner prayer, he says them differently. He slows down on his friend's name, and I couldn't have gotten that out of him by telling him to. The one rule we have is that a name goes on with a single word beside it, like "moving" or "knee" or "test Tuesday". It gives a small child something to repeat. "Help Emma with her paper" is a prayer Ben can say by himself at almost three, if you feed him the first word.

What my sister Hannah's notebook taught me

Hannah is the oldest of us and a nurse in Cedar City, and she told me this on the phone two winters ago, in the voice she uses when she's already decided to tell me and wants it over with. It's her story, so I'll keep it close to how she told it. She keeps a small spiral notebook in her scrub pocket. It isn't for charting, which she does on the computer. It's for first names and a date. She started praying for a name on each shift, one person on her floor she had no way of helping with her hands, and she'd put the name in the notebook so she'd remember to do it again the next night.

There was a man in his eighties with a failing heart, who she prayed for for nine nights. On the tenth he died. She was on, and she told me she sat in the supply room afterward with the notebook and didn't know what to write next to his name.

What she wrote was that his daughter had been there. The daughter had driven in from Las Vegas on the Tuesday and been in the room, and Hannah said that was the thing she'd been asking for for nine nights without knowing it was the thing. She didn't call it a yes when she told me. She said she'd been watching for him to get better, and she hadn't thought to look at who was in the room until she had to write something down.

Pray in your families unto the Father, always in my name, that your wives and your children may be blessed.

3 Nephi 18:21

Verse 20, just before it, has the "whatsoever ye shall ask" promise everybody remembers, and I'd leave it there for a young child, and I read verse 21 as the practical one because it says where, which is a kitchen and a van and a bedroom floor, and for us it's a fridge.

What do you do when nothing seems to happen?

This is the part I'd get wrong if I trusted my instincts, because my instinct is to tidy it up. If Duke got better I'd say look, God heard you. If he didn't I'd say well, sometimes the answer is no. Either way I'd have explained it before she'd finished looking.

What I try now is asking one question and then closing my mouth. "Have you noticed anything about Duke?" That's all. Lily told me Thursday that he was on the porch when we came back from the market and he lifted his head when she said hi, which for a beagle that old is apparently a lot. I said that sounded nice. She said, "I know, I put him on the list." Then she went to find the cat.

I just said that was nice and let her go.

I'm not sure how much a third grader should be asked to hold at once, and the way I've settled it is that I let her say what she saw and I say I'm glad. Then I pay attention to whether she keeps asking. If the dog gets worse she'll have to look at that too, and I'd like her to have the notebook habit by then, the one where you write down the date and what you saw, including the Tuesday when the daughter came.

I wrote about the dinner praise round a while back, and how kids will go along with something built for them and turn on something built at them. The list works the same way. I'd never have thought to put a beagle on it.

Frequently Asked Questions

How young can a child start praying for someone by name?

Ben is a month from three and does it with help, saying "Emma" and "Duke" and lately "Bis-kit", who is lying right there under his chair. He couldn't tell you what a prayer does. He can tell you who it's for.

Should I let my child put a pet or something silly on the list?

Yes, put the beagle on. If I'd told Lily no she'd have taken it to mean a beagle wasn't worth bringing up. We did add a rule later that people go first when we're short on time, and nobody has complained.

What if a child prays and the thing doesn't happen?

Then you ask what they saw, same as when it does. I wouldn't hand them an explanation, because I'd probably get it wrong. I like giving children a real job so they can tell the difference between helping and being helped, and the list is a job.

Do we have to do this every night?

We read it at dinner prayer most nights and skip it when somebody is crying or asleep, because a list you feel guilty about turns into a chore.

This afternoon I'm going to text Hannah and ask if she still carries the notebook, and at supper I'll ask Lily how Duke's doing.

with love, Melissa