Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Sweet dreams?


As a young child, the version of the nighttime prayer taught to me was:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

I remember this scared the poop out of me! Upon completion of this verse, I would follow it with God bless Mommy, Daddy, Sister, Grandma, Grandpa... the list went on... The whole time I'm asking God to bless everybody, my young mind was thinking, "God, don't let me die!" "I don't want to die in my sleep!" "I want to wake up in the morning!" This prayer was downright scary to me, but I prayed it anyway, fearing that if I didn't ask God to bless everybody he might forget and it would be my fault. Tough concept for a child.

Now that I'm old, it doesn't scare me anymore. The thought of dying in my sleep is rather comforting, except for the fact someone from the Medical Examiner's Office would have to wade through my house, let alone my bedroom, to haul my dead carcass out. That thought does bother me!

Several years ago, I found some stuffed animals that had a button you could push and it recites another version of this prayer.

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
Your love be with me through the night,
And wake me with the morning light.
Amen.

I liked these so much, I bought two! No point torturing the Grandkids with the other version... life's hard enough. No point adding more pressure.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I really like that version