One of my best friends has a nightly ritual with both of her daughters. They are three and a half and one and a half, both completely precious. Every night, after reading to them, my friend says these final words before they go to sleep:
“Who loves you?”
Then both girls go through this litany of naming who loves them (sometimes with help) — parents, grandparents, teachers, and friends. Sometimes the stuffed animals get named too.
I think this is a very dear practice. It’s wonderful that these girls rehearse love right at the end of the day before they fall into sleep.
Perhaps we’ve never taken a moment to go through a list of people in our minds like this, but. . . maybe that would actually be a good idea today. We never outgrow the need for this kind of awareness, a calling to mind of those who love us.
So I’ll ask us all the same question today:
Who loves you?
