How to Pray

I took my daughters to Japan on a whim: booked a 10 day, four city trip the week before. Taking a three and six year old by myself to a country we’ve never been with zero prep was a little weird, even for me. But I was turning 40 in a few months. I’d just made my first solo property purchase. I was paying all my own bills. It had been a while since I’d done things on my own. Maybe I felt I had something to prove.

During the trip I told my daughters three things:

We can do hard things

Everything is an adventure

People are good

As the days passed I repeated them so frequently they became a kind of ritual. A prayer.

When the luggage delivery service didn’t deliver our bags as scheduled, and it was 0 degrees, so I walked around in seven layers of shirts and airplane socks under Birkenstocks.

We can do hard things, I said.

When the three year old ran down the Japanese metro one way, and four suitcases wheeled the other, and someone grabbed the Paw Patrol case before it rolled onto the tracks.

People are good, I said, my voice strained.

When we lined up for 90 minutes to get into Disneyland, and right before the gate opened my youngest wailed “I need to pooooooo.”

It’s all an adventure, I said, and my eye twitched.

We survived the trip. I may have come back with a few extra kilos from the Sake and some well-earned grey hairs, but we survived. We held baby hedgehogs. Cuddled Minnie Mouse. Threw snowballs at each other. Saw the first Cherry Blossoms of the season bloom.

There’s a moment when a prayer becomes less what you say, and more what you are. Or maybe, this process of becoming comes in many small moments, moments that collectively form something beautiful and real.

The afterlives of this trip reverberate on in these moments.

When my youngest, trembling legs and hands clutched around tree limb, whispers to herself “I can do hard things. I can do hard things. I can do hard things.”

When I’m shaken and angry after being the recipient of a road rage incident, and my eldest turns to me from the passenger seat and reminds me that people are still good.

This is the legacy of parents. We kind of know what we’re doing on this journey, but mostly we don’t.

We stumble, we fall.

We aim to teach our little humans about light and love and adventure.

All the while

They teach us how to pray.