Every night before she goes to bed, Kaelyn prays. Probably for many of you. She says, in her two-year old, broken English, "Thanks . . . God . . . for . . . " and lists names of people: family, friends, people she knows. And she rounds it off with an enthusiastic "Amen!" Sure, she might not understand prayer yet [admittedly, there are still times I don't] but she knows the people in her life, and she loves saying their names before she goes to sleep. This prayer time was born out of song time. For months now, we've been singing songs before she goes to bed as well. It started out with "Jesus Loves Me," and as she picked up the words, we continued to add a song. The latest one is an old Sunday School kids favorite called, "The B-I-B-L-E." The pay-off for kids is that they get to yell "Bible!" at the end. But twice in the song, you spell out the word "Bible."
Like the other songs, Kaelyn picked up some words here and there and started to sing it on her own. Just a few days ago, she started to sing and spell out, "B . . . I . . .B . . . L . . . E."
And at that, our daughter spelled her first word.
Of course, as a minister, I demanded that it be a spiritual one. I'm already teaching her to spell, "Semipelagianism."
Fun times . . .