I had to share this short little story:
Yesterday morning, we had a girlfriend of mine and her boys over to play. As they were getting ready to go, I heard Jude saying “Jesus” a lot. I didn’t think too much of it.
After they left, all of my boys were in the living room and I was in the adjacent room, the kitchen.
Again, I heard Jude saying, “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!” He wasn’t saying it in a cursing way, more like he was trying to get the attention of Jesus.
I walked into the room to investigate. I said, “What are you guys doing?”
Jude said, “We’re playing God.”
“Oh,” I said, “Who are you?”
“I’m God,” Jude said.
“Okay, who is Jace?”
“Jace is Jesus.”
“Then who is Jett?”
“Jett is Clarence.” Jude said.
***
If you’ll remember a couple of weeks ago, my 99-year-old Great-Grandpa Clarence passed away.
Jude has not forgotten about it. Death and the concept thereof has been on his mind a lot and he’s had a lot of questions. It’s actually been pretty troubling to him as he’s grasping what it means. And why wouldn’t it? It’s an ugly, scary thing – especially from the vantage point of a 5 year old.
I am glad, however, that he has paid attention to what I’ve told him about Grandpa Clarence and because he trusted in the Lord, he is with Jesus today in heaven, thus the playing in the living room revolved around God, Jesus and Clarence being together.
Just from my perspective…My boys have had to deal with the deaths of two people that were pretty close to our family: my dad and my sister-who lived with us for the majority of the end of her life. We’ve also taken them to several funerals along the way. They often mention Grandpa and Aunt Vicky and Heaven. They bring up how I miss them. We are very matter of fact about all sorts of things around our house; adoption, race, death, etc.
I love that your boys are “playing God”! Sometime you might want to show them the obituaries in the newspaper to prove to them that death is just another part of life and it doesn’t have to be so creepy. This was a suggestion that we got from Steve Macauley during our times of loss. He is also very willing to give council on the subject!
Great story!