We were awoken this morning by a crying 5-year-old who dove into our beds asking frantically, "What does it mean to believe in Jesus? I don't want to go to hell!"

Rewind... at dinner last night, in a statement completely unrelated to anything else being discussed, Anna Kate had said, "I don't know if I even want to be a Christian." After a little probing, she even offered, "I don't know if I believe more in Jesus or in myself." It seemed as if she were actually being more open with her thoughts than just looking for shock value. Even Ethan didn't respond to her with his usual rod-of-correction tongue. Alicia just very casually responded to her, I don't even remember exactly what Alicia had said. I think there may have been a you-can't-go-to-heaven-without-believing-in-Jesus comment. But dinner resumed. My parents showed up and did some work around the house and left about time for the kids to go to bed. I had devotions with the kids - Paul on the road to Damascus, actually.

Resume, 3:30 this morning... I explained to her that believing in Jesus meant knowing that you were a sinner. God hates sin and must punish it. But if you believe in Jesus, you believe that Jesus took the punishment for sin Himself when He died on the cross. If you believe in Jesus, you believe that He took the punishment for your sin in your place, so that it is all already punished and you don't have to be punished for it. You can go to live with God in heaven some day.

She said she knew she was a sinner and that she hated her sin. She wanted to "work for God."

I then added that if you believe Jesus has saved you, then you ought to believe Jesus has saved you. In other words, if you believe Jesus has saved you, then you should leave it to Him and not worry about going to hell. In fact, you should be more excited about going to heaven, because now what you really want is to be with God.

Then she asked me if I would pray that God would keep the house "alive." Alicia had to explain that one to me. Apparently, she's had nightmares before that the roof was collapsing on her. So she wanted it to stay "alive" and not fall down. In fact, she wanted me to pray that God would keep it alive for fifteen days after Rose died. I told her that if she believed in Jesus, then she could talk to Him herself and He would listen.

So she did. And she prayed for the house to stay alive for fifteen days after Rose died. And that seemed to scare her a bit, so she added that she wanted mommy to "die of age" and daddy to die of age, Ethan to die of age, her to die of age, and Rose to die of age, and just in case God wasn't sure what "die of age" meant she explained that no one should die until they were very, very old, like a day older than Nanny or Great Gram or mommy.

She settled down after that and finally went back to sleep.