You Desire

We pray and sing over our children each night. Still. While I doubt that the nubby now much slimmer from being loved Teddy Bear will not be at Daniel's side when he is a more grown young man, I hope I'll be somewhere in the vicinity at night, still singing and praying over my son. My daughter too. The scriptures we pray and the songs we sing over them are the same each night. What isn't the same is the prayer I pray over them. Because it's our routine, though, it is easy to go into autopilot, even in prayer. But tonight I began to contemplate my own mortality, silently of course, as I was by Daniel's side ready to pray. Interesting is that it changed the way I prayed. It brought a clearer focus in my praying, and I prayed something like this:

Lord, You desire than Daniel would love you with all his heart, soul, mind, and
strength. You desire that he would not lean on his own understanding, but that in all his ways he would acknowledge you and you will direct his paths. You desire that he would walk in wisdom. You would desire that he would be a man of prayer. You would desire that he would love Your Word.

I'm sure there were more "You desire's", and then I added:

What You desire for him is Your best. This is not a list of don'ts and
cant's but Your very best that You have in
mind.

As a mother who will not live forever in a mortal body I know the day will come when I will part with this earthy life and enter into eternity with Christ. I don't want to pray in auto pilot mode over my children. I want to hear the present word on His heart. And then I want to pray just that.