The Gospel According to Ellie, Part 2

Part 1 can be found here.

For someone so young, Ellie has a fascinating take on gospel principles.

(I should state right here, for the sake of eliminating confusion, that some of these principles are unique to Mormonism. More information – and the non-four-year-old take on said principles – can be found here.)

For example, she seems to be pretty secure in the idea that she didn’t just live with God and Jesus before she came to earth, but that she was some sort of special sidekick to them. She claims that she did a lot of kicking of Satan in the head back then. You go, girl.

She also talks a lot about how she chose to follow Jesus, rather than joining Satan and his miserable 1/3 of the hosts of heaven. She talks so much about this that she’s kind of freaked out a few of her friends, who first of all do not belong to our church and therefore don’t seem to have any background in any sort of pre-existence teachings, and second of all, don’t seem to have quite the imaginary personal history of being a literal warrior for Christ. To them, Satan is The Devil, and The Devil is kinda scary. End of story.

But not Ellie. To her, Satan is someone we kick in the head and shout at to Go Away! And if people listen to him they do bad things, but she’s okay because she never listens to him, only to Jesus. So she might make little mistakes, but she’s not going to do really bad things. Oh, how I pray that attitude continues all her life.

But I digress...

Apart from her Satan obsession (which does seem to be lessening these days, thank Heaven (unintentional pun)), she’s also figuring out about the power of prayer. I wrote a rather lengthy post on this, which I’ve yet to actually post, but one day I will. Basically, one day not too long ago, she had a problem, decided to pray about it, and was then able to solve her problem. To a four-year-old, this means that God will solve all her problems if she just asks. If only that was how it worked.

On Sunday I roasted a chicken, and the drumsticks were in high demand. There are three girls, but our chicken, being of the normal variety of chickens, had only two drumsticks. Ellie, unfortunately (and due to the fact that she didn’t actually eat the last drumstick she was given) was the loser this time. Despite her despair, she volunteered to bless the food, and, through her sobs, asked Heavenly Father to please bless that Mommy and Daddy would give her a drumstick.

She finished the prayer (and her sobbing) and looked expectantly back and forth between the two of us, grinning. You could just see her thinking, Ha! I DARE you to say no now! But Heavenly Father, who I know without a doubt has a sense of humor, because He gave us the daughters He did, did not pull through for her on this one. Lesson learned, admidst a new flood of devastated tears. She got over it. I don’t think she really wanted to eat any chicken anyway, hand-held or fork-fed.

One last thing.  The other day I heard her telling our little babysitting friend, as she was leaving her alone in a room, “Don’t worry, if you get scared you can just pray and Jesus will help you not be scared anymore.” There’s nothing wrong with this except that I really have no idea what this family’s religious inclinations, if any, are and I really don’t want them to think that I’m preaching to their daughter behind their backs. There’s nothing wrong with a four-year-old talking about Jesus, but I sure don’t want to step on anyone’s toes.

But at least Ellie knows what she’s talking about and isn’t afraid to share her beliefs.

Another kick to the head for Satan right there, I think.