Bedtime Prayer

Tonight, Hannah was lingering and dawdling before bedtime, which was driving Chris and I crazy. We asked her at least a dozen times to brush her teeth, only for her to go into the bathroom, shut the door and have a pretend phone conversations with several of her imaginary friends. We asked her half a dozen times to go upstairs and put on her pajamas, only to find her building a carnival with Legos on her bedroom floor. Finally, I had had it. I sat in her room until her pajamas were on and she was tucked into bed, then I tried to hurry her through her bedtime prayers. We do the typical "Now I lay me down to sleep..." prayer and it varies slightly with what the kids want to pray for. However, when Hannah is in a mood like she was tonight, even saying her prayers takes forever. She started saying her prayers with the rhythm of her regular prayer but the words were non-words and silly. I did not have the patience for it. I said, "Just say your prayers, Hannah!! Jesus can hear you." She said that she needed to sing her "new" prayer. I still didn't have the patience. "Hannah, just say your prayers!" I said.
"But I need to sing my NEW one!" Hannah pleaded.
I was almost to my boiling point. My patience had flown out the window and I was ready to walk out without her even saying her prayers at all. All of a sudden, she started singing this:

"Jesus! Thank you for all the people and thank you for telling the guy to build the things. Thank you for all the food and thank you for all the people again, even though I already told you that. I'm going to go to sleep now so I'll pray again tomorrow, okay? Okay, Jesus, thanks for telling the guy to build all the stuff!"

It was so cute and precious that I instantly felt regret for being so impatient with her. Kids really do say the darnedest things and sometimes they're the perfect things to say at the time.