"Dad, can you hear my voice?"

Here is a little something that Bruce wrote. I think it is pretty sweet.

“Dad, can you hear my voice?”

Recently Jonathan has had a couple of traumatic experiences, in which he thought he was left behind. We really have never left him behind, but I guess this is one of those “perception is reality” situations. Since those experiences, he has been very reluctant to be out of our sight. He follows us from room to room, and when we go outside, he comes too. When we go inside, he decides he’s done playing outside and comes with us.

Of course when he’s sent to his room for timeout, or when it’s bedtime, it’s been a little bit difficult. First, Jonathan asks us to stay with him. When he found out that wasn’t going to work, he came up with a different plan.

To make sure we haven’t abandoned him, he calls out “Mom, can you hear my voice?” Of course we respond that we can hear him, and he is satisfied for a few minutes. When he starts feeling worried again, we hear “Dad, can you hear my voice?”

Today in Church I recognized an analogy in this. Normally we go through our lives, comfortable with our casual prayers and relationship with our Father in Heaven. But there are those times in our lives when we experience grief, loss, fear, or we may even feel abandoned. Those are the times that we turn to our Father in Heaven, and say something like “Dad, can you hear my voice?”