Memory PBE:

"I Asked If You Could Be My Mommy"

A young mother was trying to help her two year-old-daughter Jennie cope with her insecurities.  Jennie resisted being forced to sleep by herself, sucked her thumb vigorously and would not go anywhere without her blanket.  On the occassion when this experience occurred, they were just settling down to sleep in the mother's bed.  The blanket had been left in the other room and Jennie snuggled up close to her mother, crying that she needed the blanket.  Her mother finally relented and went to get it.  She stopped crying and was earnestly sucking her thumb when she stopped, popped her thumb out and said,

"Mommy, you know what, I asked Jesus if you could be my mommy."  She reinserted her thumb and went back to sucking.

Her mother described her reaction to this remark. "I was confounded because we are not Chrisians but Jewish, and we had never spoken about Jesus or angels, or religious topics around her.  I had no idea where my tiny daughter would have heard such a thing. I lay there contemplating what she had just said when she popped her thumb out again and said, 'But I was afraid!'

"I asked her, 'But honey, what were you afraid of?'

"I was stunned.  Two years [before Jennie's birth], I had lost a little girl in my ninth month.  I had been devastated and did not speak about her to anyone.  There was no way she could have known about that baby, but she did."