Creative Gratitude

Michael and I both love Hailey's prayers. For one thing, she is so optimistic about getting what she asks for that she voices her gratitude in advance, replacing all her 'pleases' with 'thank you's,' like 'thank you we can have a good day tomorrow.' Also, she is grateful for the weirdest things. For years, she always remembered to thank God for eggs. She doesn't even like eggs.

Last night, Michael listened to her prayer, and she added a new one.

Thank you we can live on the safest planet.

After the prayer, she told Michael that they had learned about planets in school that day, and it had become abundantly clear to her that our planet was by far the safest option, because asteroids beat up other planets.

Michael took advantage of the teaching moment to explain how the atmosphere works. I'll probably botch the details with my poor memory, but this was the gist of it.

'Do you know what keeps our planet safe from asteroids?'

'Yeah. God does.'

'Well, okay. But also air. You know the stuff we breathe? It burns up rocks that come from outer space so they can't hurt us.'

Michael said Hailey didn't quite know what to think of that. I imagine it was a mind-blowing revelation.

If technology ever comes up with an invention where we can visit the insides of other people's brains like a tourist destination, I'd pick Hailey's head for my first vacation. There has got to be some really fun and wacky stuff going on inside there. And if they can ever combine that device with a time-traveling one, I'd like to go back to that night, just after Hailey learned about the super powers of air and how it can burn up asteroids.