Praying

I just spent the last two hours on the computer looking for prayer cards for children. Just to save you a couple of hours... there aren't any.

Awhile back I bought a Buddhist Prayer Deck for my seven year old... I know... what was I thinking??? I guess I thought there could be some beautiful simple prayers mixed in... but really there aren't... not simple ones. She has repeatedly tried to teach herself how to pray, but doesn't know what to do. I've tried some instruction, but she gets frustrated quickly if it seems that I'm trying to "teach" her... and she shoves me away. I can respect that... I think it feels like the prayer that she wants to do is being minimized with the idea that it can be taught... and yet... I feel like she wants something she doesn't have in her life.

So, I pored over other possibilities... like affirmation decks (I bought one for teens... when it gets here we'll see how much of it I am willing to turn over to her)... and I ultimately decided that I'm going to have to make one for her. I bought some pagan prayer books (I already have one that I love), and I figure that I'll write some for her. Maybe I'll have them ready for Yule! ;)

Giant hurdle #1... learn a little bit about PhotoShop... grrr.... despite having to learn a new program, I AM trying to keep it simple. I want them to look like cards in the sense that I want them to have a front and back, I want them to be attractive (but all the backs will be the same) and the prayer will have a "wallpaper"-like background... though I think I'm going to try to make those all different so that it will be interesting... probably nature scenes mostly.

Wish me luck! Although, if I do learn PhotoShop then maybe I will finally illustrate my book of children's wand spells (we bought the kids wands one year at the Renaissance Faire and there was some discussion of how to use one and what kind of things to use it for... so I wrote up a "manual") and self-publish it. Hmmm... this may turn out to be good for me after all!