Tonight during during bedtime prayers my three-year-old asked Jesus to “please let my daddy come back from heaven and live in my house with me so I can see him.” She never met her daddy because he died before she was born. I interrupted her prayer and gently told her people can’t come back from heaven. She said “oh” a little sadly and then finished praying. It was a crushing experience for me. Yet I didn’t cry. I’m not sure what it is she knows she’s missing... seeing as there’s never been a dad in her life. Many of her friends have dads she interacts with, and she has uncles who are involved; but still— why does she say she misses her daddy? Is it simply a learned mimicked response to her sister, as well as an empathy to the fact that I miss him? She longs for something she never had, yearns for something she never knew, desires more than the life she’s been given. Wow. When I word it that way it just sounds like typical human nature doesn’t it? She’s not so different than the rest of us and it isn’t so hard to understand really. She desires love and a sense of security. I provide her with those things, but to be honest I could provide them better as part of a team. When I was married Abbi had double the love and double the security. Aurora has never known that type of home. Somehow though, just somehow, she still knows that things could be better than they are.