Luna's Prayer
How God's words filtered through a child's heart opened my eyes to a world of color.
This past summer marked the climax of one of the darkest spiritual seasons I’ve ever walked through. Two years removed from a spiritually toxic church, my mind still swirled with more questions than I could hold. A season of deeper spiritual understanding had given me unwavering hope—but it also handed me a hammer and chisel, tools that only hastened the crumbling castle in my mind.
By summer’s end, I was living in rubble.
I hadn’t wanted it to end that way, but it did. The months passed without relief, without rejuvenation, and suddenly I was standing in front of my calendar, preparing for our homeschool co-op’s “Meet the Teacher” night. Empty, unprepared, and stripped of all luster, I wondered what I had left to offer the kids this year.
While planning for Art History, my co-teacher asked if we’d be opening each class with prayer again. Last year, I had written a small liturgy to begin each lesson—a simple, creative rhythm that quieted the room and reminded us that God is in all things, even in art class.
But that felt light-years away from where I was now. The question startled me. It hadn’t even occurred to me to write a prayer. Certainly I could write one—but first, I had to admit how far I’d drifted from the simplicity and honesty of childlike prayer. How very far.
For days I circled around it—caught between the raw ache of my own spiritual crisis and the desire to lead these children with authenticity. I longed to speak from real faith, not a masked version of it. I would not fake my way through this.
Still, the words didn’t come.
Time was up. Driving to co-op, I inhaled deeply and whispered a prayer of my own: God, help me. And in that moment, something shifted—just the smallest glimmer. Fragile and few, the words arrived. Honest. Barely enough. But real. I typed them quickly before they could disappear.
I stumbled through the first few classes. I forgot the lines. Then I accidentally deleted the prayer from my notes app. A kind father stood at the back of class, trying to recover the lost words on my phone while I tried to lead without them.
By the final class of the day, I had pieced it back together—relying on the memory of hand motions and help from another class mom. I led the prayer, and that’s when something small and holy happened.
Luna—radiant, buoyant, nine years old and full of life—prayed with me. There was a tenacity in her spirit that reminded me of my younger self. She cracked my heart open with her words.
(Lifting hands to the open sky) → Thank you God for this beautiful world. (Placing hands on head) → Thank you for giving us creativity. (Hands held in front, palms up) → Help us make beautiful things (Hands above head held in a circle) → that will bless the world, (Hands held wide in front) → each other, (Hands held together over heart) → and Your heart.
I saw her at that last line—eyes closed, hands pressed gently over her chest. The words on her lips rang out like the truest notes of a song. The posture of her spirit pierced straight through mine, and for the first time in a long time, I felt her childlike trust spark something to life in me.
Those words—God’s words—filtered through room after room of beating little hearts, eager to learn, to love, to live. It woke me up.
Not like a lightning strike. Not like a jolt. No drama, no fanfare. More like someone who had fallen asleep in the dead of winter, curled on the frozen floor of a silent forest, and then—suddenly, imperceptibly—they awake. And the woods are alive with spring. The color has returned. Things are awakened. They perceived in but a moment what had taken a whole season to bring.
In that moment, my world bloomed with color again.
It felt like magic, Luna’s prayer. I can still see her—face bowed, hands over heart, whispering that her tiny offering might bless God’s heart.
It undoes me now. And I pray it undoes me always.
May we each touch the beauty of childlike faith when we need it most.
May it loosen the stiff joints of our hearts.
May it thaw our frozen winters.
And may it come, as brilliantly and surprisingly, as the tender fire of a child’s prayer.