Prayers of an older brother....

I'm amazed sometimes how God works. Really? Aren't we all. The good times are easy to deal with and delight in, praising God for them comes second hand. The bad times however, are something that most people, especially me, have a hard time coping with. Instead of leaning on God, I tend to think "what am I doing wrong as a parent?", "is there something wrong with my child?", "does he act this way because of something that I did?". Instead of reflecting on James 1 in that all troubles should be viewed as joyful as they are growing us in and helping us to become closer to God. Easier said then done, right? Well our little Vaughny has been giving us a run for our money. We've gone through a few phases with Torin but as they say each kid is different and Vaughn's temper is MUCH different then Torin's. He can get pretty verbally abusive and it really upsets Torin. To the point that Torin has told me on a number of occassions that he doesn't like when Vaughn talks like that. Vaughn will say that he hates himself, he hate this and that and everything in between. He'll bite himself or hit himself. Obviously, it's not something that we take lightly but being a pretty tempermental child myself I'm not overly concerned about it. But it does really concern Torin. The other night he was saying that he was afraid when Vaughn said things like that or did things like that so as we were praying by himself, not asked by me, he prayed "Dear God, please give my brother Vaughn strength to calm himself down so that he wouldn't say such mean words and help him to see what a cool kid that he really is. Always protect him and love him so that he doesn't get himself so worked up." My heart melted at hearing this. I told Torin that Vaughn was really blessed to have a brother like him and to never stop praying for Vaughn as it will only help him. Since then pretty much every night Torin will say some type of prayer for Vaughn. Sometimes it's light and when there's been an episode of sort it's usually a little more detailed. Of course I don't like Vaughn going through this, no parent would, but to think that if we weren't going through it that Torin would probably not have started praying for Vaughn makes me think that there's a reason behind it. Can you imagine knowing that one of your sibilings is praying for you every night? That every day someone cares enough about you to put you in their prayers. And not just pray for good health and all that good stuff but truly, a heartfelt prayer. Honestly, I know that my brother and sister love me dearly but I also know that they have probably never said a prayer for me. So if this was God's plan to show Torin the power in prayer then so be it :)