Living the every day with God and a 10 month old

It’s so important to me that I parent my little one in faith. That I show him what it means for my heart to be connected to God in the everyday and that I model that really clearly. I’m not going to be satisfied just to have a prayer at bedtime or a story in Sunday school because my faith is so much more than that and that’s what I want him to see and understand.

(NB. We do also chat to God before bedtime and on the last two occasions my little boy has punched me in the face (trying to get off my lap) and bitten me (too excited whilst trying to stand on my lap). Clearly for him the before the bed prayer is not the most peaceful time!)

I’m so keen that my little one knows what faith looks like for me. When He’s older it won’t be a shock to Him that I know God and I chat to Him every day because he’ll have been seeing it the whole time. If an ambulance goes past He’ll totally expect me to pray for the people it’s going to, if something wonderful has happened he’ll expect me to tell God how awesome it is!

I’m not perfect but God loves me, I love Him and I try to walk each day in relationship with Him. So, how do I share this with my kid? Especially when he’s so young?

I have to be honest at points it has felt pretty weird, but then again I do spend a lot of my time looking like I’m talking to myself when I’m talking to him (often in the supermarket) so I can handle it.

We (I) chat to Daddy God a lot. Whilst we’re watching TV we’ll chat about what He might think about it, we talk about what dreams He might give us at night, what we’ve enjoyed that day. It’s part of our everyday. We also often have loud worship dancing sessions in the kitchen and we sing. And now, he joins in and sings with me. I’m so pleased I invited him into that with me and God.

Yesterday in the car I did some processing. Does anyone else do that? You’ve suddenly got time to process all those big things that you sort of half took in and then they hit you really hard in the quiet of the car? I processed something big and I got pretty emotional. Now, if I’m honest I wanted to just put my sunglasses on and have a good cry but instead I explained to my little boy, “mummy is sad because she’s thinking about something a friend is going through. Daddy God can heal that person and I am praying so hard for that but I’m sad and I’m chatting to God about how I feel”. As I spoke my little one listened intently and watched me (we have one of those mirrors so he can see me and vice versa). Now, I have no idea what he was thinking but for me that whole interaction is what parenting for faith looks like. I invited him in to seeing what it looks like to be in relationship with God. We did it as a family.

Once, I’d had a good cry we turned up the worship and sung as loud as we could! His face lights up when we worship and he squeals his little heart out. It is such a wonderful reminder to me of God’s goodness and beauty.