It has been the desire of my heart since reading this prayer forty-one years ago that I would be a "child of God" with a heart of love for Father in all situations. Long afterward, that desire was tested when I read this prayer at my twenty-four-year-old son's funeral.  God is faithful and I am so grateful that reading George MacDonald all those years brought me to the place where I could read this prayer in that situation.  I'm so grateful that the Father heart of God is the center of the universe.  That's what I have learned from MacDonald.   

O God, if thou wilt not let me be a mother, I have one refuge: I will go back and be a child: I will be thy child more than ever. My mother-heart will find relief in childhood towards its Father. For is it not the same nature that makes the true mother and the true child? Is it not the same thought blossoming upward and blossoming downward? So there is God the Father and God the Son. Thou wilt keep my little son for me. He has gone home to be nursed for me. And when I grow well, I will be more simple, and truthful, and joyful in thy sight. And now thou art taking away my child, my plaything, from me. But I think how pleased I should be, if I had a daughter, and she loved me so well that she only smiled when I took her plaything from her. Oh! I will not disappoint thee--thou shall have thy joy. Here I am, do with me what thou wilt; I will only smile.

NB: IN 2015, we published Janet Montgomery's essay, Birth, Dreaming, Death in our MacDonald & Me blog; to read it, click here.