Letter to A Sleeping Miles

My sweet pea,

Tonight you fell asleep while I was saying prayers. I opened my eyes just in time to see yours flutter and finally seal.

The interesting part is: You were so fully awake just 2 minutes before you were asleep.

I admit it, I was trying to cut corners, so I said only the most basic "thanks" and "keep us safe" tonight. I half-raised one eyelid to check the go-to-sleep progress and your expression was a brewing storm. Your open eyes were giant black orbs in the lamplight. Your mouth was a hard line, and that didactic index finger was already moving to point at me. "You're not done! You're sup-POSED to say more!"

I thought about being offended, then about laughing out loud, and decided to just keep praying. Evidently, I was supposed to say more.

I asked you to think about what YOU wanted to say to God, and to think it while I kept talking. I started naming names, wondering if continued lamentation over Papa Jim's state of heart is really good for you to hear, and then I noticed how regular were your breaths.

I've been puzzling, lately, about prayer. What does it do, exactly? What's my motivation when I make one? There's one vein of thought that says prayer doesn't so much change our circumstances as it changes ourselves. There's another vein of thought, not necessarily opposing but decidedly different in tone, that says Heaven awaits our asking, and we we do not receive because we do not believe.

Right now, I still don't know which I more believe.

I think it's like physics, Miles. Prayer can be endlessly discussed, can be engagingly talked around... but to most of us commoners, it's full of far too many too-sophisticated concepts to be reduced, quantified or readily explained.

Before I lose my own vein of thought, what I wanted to say about bedtime tonight is that I have been thinking a lot about prayer, and suddenly, I was given an example of prayer in action. Perhaps a less expected action, but doesn't that seem to fit? Something physical and discernable occured, something that I somehow know was NOT coincidence. My speaking to God put you immediately and completely to rest -- my same voice and address that earlier couldn't make you put down a drinking glass!

I've been so earnestly turning over my thoughts, and while I still have no conclusion, tonight I received an answer. Prayer matters! It changed your small world, Miles, and so it changed the whole world. In whatever tiny, fluttery way it worked, it worked. I should practice prayer, then, as often as I can in as many ways as I can, because it matters. ...And that seems like enough for this amateur philosopher to go on.

In fact, that's quite a gift.

I'm glad you were a part of it.

Sleep tight.
Love,
Mom