I've been "princess sitting" two little girls for the past six years. For the sake of this blog, I'll call them "M." and "A." They're currently ages 10 and 8, respectively (and to show how old I am, I definitely typed "8 and 6" the first time!).
I was watching these two "princessesses" this past Friday when one of their neighborhood friends (I'll call her "S.") stopped by for a short visit. All three girls were playing in a little playhouse at the top of their swing set and I was on puppy duty (puppies are horribly messy when it's a post-melted-snow type of day and no one wants little girls with muddy paw prints all over their clothes!) but what I heard from a short distance away absolutely made my day--no, my week.
M. and A. asked their friend, S., if she had been reading the Bible they gave her and whether or not she had been going to church. S. said, "well...I haven't really read it yet...I get really busy with homework and stuff..." and re:church she said that "church is REALLY boring and the last two times I went I didn't learn anything!"
Thinking that this would discourage the princesses I know and love, I thought the girls might just shrug it off and let it go or perhaps change their tone to a disappointed one and continue playing.
But, no.
They countered their adorable little friend and said, "But church is fun, and the Bible has LOTS of really good stories in it!"
Then M. proceeded to tell the story of Moses in great detail (it may have helped that we talked about part of his story--but still, only a small part of it--earlier that day during homeschooling) from birth to rescuing his people from Egypt. My heart melted!
A little more than halfway through M.'s story, S. said, "I'm getting SO BORED. Are you done with the story yet??"
And without missing a beat, M. said, "almost, then we can play!" and continued where she left off in the story.
And, of course, A. was adding wonderful details to the story, too!
At the end of the story, again, S. very explicitly expressed her boredom (even though, personally, I thought the girls did an excellent job of telling the story with excitement and enthusiasm to make it interesting for S., but the princesses didn't get discouraged. Instead, they said, "yep, we can play now!"
But not before adding this statement:
"The truth is, you don't understand how important this is. You have to have a relationship with Jesus to go to Heaven."
The whole time I was listening to this conversation (okay, not eavesdropping! I was probably 6 feet away and they were looking at me as if to acknowledge my presence in the conversation, so I was, indeed, allowed to hear everything!), my heart was filled with so many emotions and my thoughts were running wild.
Poor girls, their friend doesn't really want to hear about Jesus. :(
Good job with being persistent and trying to help her want to read the Bible!
And good job remembering what you've learned about Moses!
Why would a girl speak so disrespectfully about what her friend has to say to her?! (That was me kind of being a momma duck and sensing some injustice, but the princesses handled everything very well and were respectful in return regardless of what S. had to say, so I suppose it worked out alright. Gotta let little ones choose their own battles sometimes!)
But probably the most heartwarming thing for me was seeing the true, genuine, love M. and A. have for their friend and the passion they have for making sure the people they love get to be in the Kingdom of Heaven with them.
This moment is one of the reasons why kids give me hope. :)
