the words of a 10 year old

i had a pretty rough day today. the kind of rough that leaves you in tears for a couple of hours when you finally get home and let your hair down. the truth is, there are parts of my life that have been hard for a while now. as i last wrote, there are days when i struggle to find words; a tension that spills over into my relationship with God. today as i cried, i wrestled with this and just as i was about to give up, my fancy phone lit up. as she sometimes does, my 10 year old friend had nabbed her mother's phone to text me. she told me about her day and asked about mine. while i may spare the details, i'm not okay with lying to children. when she heard about the generalities of my day, she said the age old christian cliche 'i will pray for you'. but nothing about her words fit "cliche" as the next thing she said was 'dear god, i pray for..." after the 'amen', she said she loved me. it's a profound moment that i will probably never quite be able to grasp. in the very second that my internal pain paralyzed my lips, my 10 year old friend stood in the gap.