~Molly Cleans Her Ears to Hear God~ ~Lolo and her Rice Bowl~

I shared this story with a few of you, but felt it was sweet enough to repeat as today is Ash Wednesday. This is a long post today, but it is heartfelt.

A while back, my oldest was about to get into something naughty, from the other room I said softly, "remember God is watching you" and left it at that. Later that night she came up to me and questioned this. So we had a long discussion about how God can see everyone and everything. Then she asked me how I knew what she was doing. My reply..."because God told me." Now I know this is not totally true, I mean I didn't have a conversation at that naughty moment with God and he said "watch out for that oldest one, she's gonna be in trouble" but I wanted her to know that He is there, He is watching and even in those times that I am not there to watch over her, she needs to do the right thing (I'm praying this will carry on to the teen years) so anyways, it has been awhile since then and just last night she asked me,

"Mom, how do you hear God when he talks to you?"

"In my heart"

"How?"

"I listen, I pray, and I hear him"

"But I don't hear him mom"

"Listen harder and ask him to talk to you, sometimes he tells us things and we are too busy to hear him."

Few more questions and we are done...Later that night as she is saying her prayers...

"Dear God, my mom used an ear thing to clean my ears, I hope I can hear you better now."

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, it was so hearfelt and sweet. If only it was that easy to hear God.

The compassion of children is an eye opener, it's amazing, gracious, honest and genuine. My Lolo learned about an orphanage at school on Monday. They have the option of taking home a bowl (piggy bank) to collect change for a cause. We did not take one, simply because on Sunday we received a Rice Bowl from church and we are working on that first. We are standing in the hallway at school and she has something to tell me that is very urgent, very important. I bend down and listen. My dear sweet child has tears in her eyes. She is crying for the children who don't have Mommy's and Daddy's or even Nana's and Papa's. She is telling me all about the children with no homes so they go and live together and the place that they live, the "orfage" is broken and not nice and nobody has money and they can't fix it and sometimes they don't have food because they don't have money and we can give them money mom, we have money mom, we can help them, I can give them my money mom because I have plenty and I have a house and I can share my money mom. *Hugging, crying* It wasn't until I promised her that we would talk about it more at home, that I would show her the Rice Bowl that we received from church~ then and only then did the tears slow down, the voice return to normal and her breathing slow back down again. We zipped our coats, got into our car, drove down our nice streets and into our warm home. I took out the Rice Bowl, she ran upstairs and returned with her piggy bank. The sweet child dumped ALL of it into the Rice Bowl, then looks over at her Nana~ who knew, she knew what was on Lolo's mind, got her purse out and dumped all of hers into the Rice Bowl. Because of my dear sweet Lolo, we have filled our Rice Bowl and will be taking home the piggy bank from school today to fill that as well...because we can...because we have plenty and because Lolo cares enough to make it happen.

~~~~~~~~~~2 POSTS TODAY~~~~~~~~~~