Boxing and Praying

So my boys have been into boxing lately. It’s their latest interest. You always have the mainstays: basketball and gamecube. But other than that there are new interests that get rotated in… For awhile it was digging for treasure at our little park down the street. (Oh, and they were digging for their own treasure. They would bury stuff and then go back an hour later to dig it up…) Then there was golf for a time. Shay actually broke an “ancient Korean vase” when practicing his golf one day. At least that’s what one of our neighbors labeled it as. Funny, I haven’t been able to get that guy to come to church for some reason… Recently it’s been boxing. They’ve been bugging me to get them into a boxing league. (Like they have boxing leagues for 5 yr olds and 9 yr olds?) I couldn’t do that but finally I did buy them a pair of gloves. So now they beat on each other, on me, on anything that walks by. It makes for a restful home. My girls (both their mom and my 12 yr old daughter) just walk by and shake their heads. They don’t get it. How do you explain it? Sometimes guys just need to punch things. Reminds me of my nephews, Cole and Quin. My brother was talking to them one time and somehow a topic came up of what was one thing they’d like to do or one question they would want answered… something along those lines. Quin, who was 8 at the time says, “I’d love to know what heaven is like.” Cole, who was 10 thought about it for awhile and then said, “I’d like to punch someone in the face.” I love that story. That’s just the way boys are… you can’t quite explain it… but somehow they need to test their strength. Runnin, punchin, wrestlin, jumpin, swingin (all these words are just more fun to pronounce without the ‘g’ part at the end.) it really doesn’t matter… just something physical. The beauty of it means that at the end of the day they are very tired. (Of course, so are us adults!) They have about just enough time to say their prayers before they are off to sleep. I try to teach them about praying… you know all kinds of little things… like it doesn’t have to be long or it doesn’t have to be a memorized thing or what and who to pray for, etc… (Ann Lamott, a fantastic author, says she has a friend who prays “whatever” in the morning and “oh, well” at night. That cracks me up.) Sometimes I try to get my kids to pray for things other than themselves. Which probably isn’t a bad thing to do but usually after a while I realize that they are just praying about the stuff that matters to them and that is ok. In fact I think God is pleased with that. In Matthew Jesus tells us not to babble on when we pray but to be sincere and honest. That’s what my boys do very well. I could learn from that. (In fact I’m going to right now cuz I see they have their boxing gloves on. “Lord, sincerely and honestly protect me.” ) j