spiritual milestone tonight.

Wow, Shawn and I witnessed a major spiritual milestone in Reilly this evening. She had a great day today (behavior wise!) and we had just gotten back from a short trip to the pool as a family. We were heading up for quick showers so we could eat oatmeal cookies and watch a little Panther football before bed and Reilly chose to argue and whine and complain about needing to take a shower. Since this is something we work on HOURLY in this household, I immediately told her she would not be having an oatmeal cookie due to the arguing and complaining. She then got super upset and carried on for the next 15 minutes. Finally she came to me and said, "Mommy, why is God not helping me have a good night? I prayed this morning before 8:00 (when she is allowed to come out of her room)and asked Him to help me have a good day today, but why is He not helping me have a good night?" She was so sincerely remorseful and was very upset that she had prayed for something but all the sudden it wasn't working anymore. My first reaction was awe. Did she really just say that? Did she really just ask that? Is she really understanding that God does help us if we ask Him to? She brings up such a good point, one that I too have quite often! I rattled off some answer that I'm sure wasn't nearly as profound as it should have been and tried to get her to calm down so I could go feed Layton. I took her and Braxton downstairs to start watching the game while I went to feed Layton and Shawn finished up in the shower. While Shawn was getting dressed in the bedroom he overheard Reilly downstairs, still very upset, saying to herself, "I just need to go to my room and pray. I just need to go pray." and then she ran upstairs and pushed her door to close, but it remained a few inches open. Just enough so that when Shawn walked over to see what she was still upset about, he could see her laying face down on the floor, praying: "God, please help me have a good day AND a good night EVERY night!" Wow. I'm so proud of her and I'm so amazed that a 4year old mind and heart is already able to have a glimpse of the Love that her Heavenly Father has for her....so much so that she WANTS to talk to Him and ask Him to help her make good choices!!