We always say a prayer before we eat at meal time. Before DD could talk, Saresh and I would alternate who said the prayer at each meal time, and it was usually more along the lines of Thanksgiving prayer (i.e. thanking God for what we have, beyond just that meal), and usually adding in people who were in our thoughts or needed our prayers. We didn’t use a “set” prayer.

When DD started to talk, she started making us all hold hands. Then at the end of the prayer, she would look up and yell, “A – en! Eat!” She couldn’t make the “m” sound. Sometimes, we still tease her and will say “A-en” at the end of a prayer, and she doesn’t get it and says, “You’re saying it wrong. It’s AMMMen, Daddy.” She enunciates the “m” so loudly we crack up every time.

After a while, she started wanting Saresh to say the prayer, not me. She called it “singing” even though she knew the word for it was “pray.” “I want Daddy to sing, Mama.” Sometimes she listened intently, and other times she seemed focused on anything other than the prayer. I love that she thinks of it as singing – in a way it is. She can hear the feeling of praise in his voice, and it sounds very different from when he is just speaking. It is a song of praise in a sense.

We she mastered speaking well, we switched to the meal time gold standard prayer for kids:

God is great; God is good; Let us thank Him for our food. Amen.

We figured she could say the prayer each time and we wanted her to participate. Also, this is the prayer they use at her preschool before snack time, so it’s being reinforced elsewhere.

I always wondered if she “got it” – why we said the prayer, or if she just thought it was something you do before you eat. Then one day she said, “I don’t want to do this prayer [meaning the God is great one]. I want Daddy to sing.” We were so surprised, but he happily obliged her, and every once in a while she asks for him to “sing” either in place of our regular prayer, or sometimes after it. And she’s insistent that we hold hands in a circle, to connect “my family,” as she says.

Also, she asks questions, like “Why do we bow our heads?” She’s the head bowing police – if you don’t do it, the whole table will hear about it. To which we have to remind her that if she was checking to see if other people bowed their heads, that means hers wasn’t bowed either, which gets a sheepish “Oh.” response. If she has Saresh say a prayer, she may ask questions about what he mentioned in the prayer, or she’ll reiterate, “It IS a beautiful day!” I’m pretty sure she understands now, and as her understanding has grown, so has the prayer’s importance to her.

We don’t usually pray at the in-laws, opting to say a silent prayer to ourselves before we eat. However, DD on occasion asks that we all pray there. MIL and FIL don’t seem to mind, and they’ve now memorized “God is great.” I suspect eventually she’ll ask why they don’t pray like we do at meal time; and more likely she’ll ask that we do it every time there.

By far, this past Thanksgiving is my best memory of her “prayer requests.” MIL had the dining table set so the entire extended family could sit together. Not everyone was seated yet and Saresh’s uncle started to eat. DD yells, “Don’t eat! We haven’t said our prayer!” Bemused, he waited until everyone sat and then she announces that we all must hold hands and then “Daddy will sing.” Like a queen, she gave Saresh the nod to begin the prayer and I was laughing inside with great pride and amusement.

She may not know what the word “Amen” means, but she is a force in manifesting it. I love reflecting on that moment when her order request brought two cultures together to hold hands and reflect on the massive blessings that God has bestowed on our families. Amen.