Tell Me All Your Thoughts On God

Spirituality is, of course, often a subject of fascination for our kids. It may be difficult to find ways to discuss these issues and keep it on their level, but we do the best we can. It's really cool when they start asking questions about God or heaven or whatever seems to interest them along those lines.

Heidi and I are both very spiritual people and we both grew up in Christian churches - hers was fundamentalist Christian and mine was Baptist - but we're not regularly attending any particular church right now. At some point we both think it might be good to get involved with one again (neither fundamentalist nor Baptist, though) and to expose Anna to more structured spirituality - though in a less rigid way than we were. We want her to learn about diverse points of view and come to her own conclusions because we feel that leads to the most genuine kind of belief and faith.

Photo from dreamstime.com

But I digress.  We first discussed God with Anna in the context of Heaven and in response to her questions about her deceased Betta fish, Nemo, and my late best friend, Ken (see "I Want My Fish Back!"). I told her that, like Nemo went to fish heaven, Ken went to Heaven to be with God and that he was kind of like a guardian angel, which I then had to attempt to define.


"So Ken is God?"  Anna asked.


I chuckled. "No, honey, he's with God. So he'll always be with us, in a way. But I still miss him."

I know you're always there....

"I miss him too," she replies, though she did not know him. Her interest in talking about him makes me wonder if he has somehow connected with her. Maybe he really is our guardian angel. In any event, I think it's just really cool that my child feels a sense of connection to someone I loved so much, even though he's no longer here.


She has since brought up God in the context of Ken. Once, she asked where heaven was and where God was. "Is it [heaven] up in the sky, like Ken?" 

Photo from freebigpictures.com

I don't know about you, but I find the preschooler thought process fascinating on many levels, especially this one. Anna seems to be more in tune with these things than one would expect, especially where we don't attend church regularly. I've heard that children are most receptive to spiritual or otherworldly experiences - seeing "ghosts," having deceased loved ones communicate with them, etc. I believe it.


So, sometimes kids' musings about God are really amazing, and sweet. Whenever I ask how she got to be so pretty, or smart, or anything like that, Anna will reply that God made her like that. True, indeed. 

But sometimes these thoughts are just plain funny.  Lately, Anna has been doing a robot impression where the robot says, "Oh, do-di-do...I stink!" over and over again. So, one day, I asked her how she learned that robots can stink. Her reply?

"From God. He made me like that. He made us both like that." 

And here are a few gems from one of my nephews, who is four years old.

"When God was alive, babies hadn't been invented yet."

"God didn't have a trash can, so when he made a mistake, he couldn't throw it away....he just made something else."

"Though he didn't have a trash can, God did have a toilet. So where there was a smushed, dead bug on the ground, he would scoop it up with a tissue and flush it."

It doesn't get any funnier than that! 

If your kids have come up with musings about God, profound, or amusing, or both - please share them in the comments!