I am vacationing in Chicago, visiting my family with my 9 year old daughter. I don't get to see my family as often as I would like because I now live in Georgia... Anyway... we were exchanging funny kid stories, and a funny story came to my mind...
When my 9 year old was in Kindergarten, they learned the Pledge of Allegiance very early. They say the pledge every morning before school starts and they then have a moment of silence. My daughter came home one night and decided she wanted to say grace before dinner.. We allowed her to say grace, and she recited the pledge of allegiance. After I stopped my 2 older daughters from uncontrollably laughing, I explained to my little one that the pledge of allegiance was not a prayer. She seemed to understand, so I thought nothing of it.
The next day, I got a call from her school saying there was a problem, of a non-emergency nature, however they needed me to come to the principal's office. Once I got to school, the principal explained to me that Courtnie refused to say the pledge of allegiance and she felt it best that I spoke to her about her reasons why. I asked her what the problem was, and she said she was not going to pray to the flag because you are only supposed to pray to God, and she did not want to make God mad at her. I explained that the pledge was not a prayer to the flag, it was just something we say to show we are proud or our country and we honor and respect it and promise to remain loyal to our country. I then put my foot further into my mouth by saying you can pray to God when you have a moment of silence. Her response was.. Well that sucks... you can talk to the flag outloud, but you have to be quiet to God... I'm not gonna do that, if I can't talk to God, then I ain't talking to no flag because it isn't fair..God wants us to talk to him too... and she started to cry... I decided that I would not push the issue, because she actually made a lot of sense. She did not say the pledge throughout kindergarten or first grade... When she got to second grade, she came to me and said, I understand about the pledge now... I will start saying it again... It just sucks that we can't pray too. God needs to know what we feel about him too... We are telling the flag that we are one nation under God..and people under God are supposed to pray!!!!!
Maybe that's how we can get prayer back into schools... Just tell the candidates that not being able to pray at school really sucks....LOL
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