Our not-so-peaceful prayer vigil

            This afternoon we participated, for the fifth year in a row, in the 40 days for life prayer vigil.   There were a few years when Tim took the “big” kids and I stayed at home to offer my prayers because our youngest was just too little to have out on the side of the road praying in front of the abortion mill.  Last year we took her along, but really, she was still pretty little.  

This year, she went along again.   And, this year, she is a big girl (as she always tells us).  So, it should have come as no surprise to me that this year, she was very curious about the whole experience.  In fact this year, our peaceful prayer vigil was not as peaceful as it had been in the past, because my curious little big girl talked non stop the entire time we were there.

            As we arrived and greeted a few others from our church who were already praying quietly, their rosaries in hand, my little one started in with her questions.  “Mommy, why are we here?” she wanted to know.

            I tried my best to explain it to her in a way she could understand.  “We are here to pray for babies.”

            “I love babies,” she said adoringly at the mere thought of a soft, sweet baby.

            We picked out signs to hold before taking our place on the sidewalk.  “What does that sign say?”  she asked pointing to a white sign with big black letters.

“It says ‘Pray to End Abortion’.  Abortion is something bad that hurts babies.”

“Our friend ‘J’ is a baby,” she informed me wisely.

“Baby ‘J’ is safe,” I assured her, “abortion cannot hurt her.”

Then she saw a sign with a baby on it.  “Life is beautiful,” the sign proclaimed and next to the words was the adorable face of a chubby cheeked infant.  “I like that sign,” my own adorable chubby cheeked child told me.  

            “Okay,” I told her a few minutes later, “we are here to pray.  Can you pray for babies?”  She nodded and together we prayed, “God bless babies, ALL babies, especially the tiniest ones.”  We held our sign in silence for just a moment.

            It was not long before she had another question though.  “Mommy, why do some cars beep?” she wanted to know after a few cars drove past with the drivers laying on their horns in loud, obnoxious protest of our peaceful vigil and a few cars beeped a few friendly toots of their horns, waving as they drove by.  

            “Some cars beep because they love babies too and they want us to know they are praying with us.  But, some cars beep because they do not like what we are doing.”

            She thought about that for a while.  Then she looked up at me with her big brown eyes and told me quite firmly, “Everybody loves babies.”  

            Oh, if only that were true…….

God bless babies, ALL babies, especially the tiniest ones.

 photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/white_wolf/5019846884/">wht_wolf9653</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">cc</a>