We were at a neighbor’s house when my four-year-old, Ronan, became fascinated with a toy bow-and-arrow. He played with it until we left, and as we walked home, he asked me if he could have one of his own.

“Sure, sweetie, maybe someday,” I replied absently as I navigated a bumpy patch of sidewalk with my double-wide stroller. Then, as we reached our house, Ronan began to cry.

When I asked what was wrong, he struggled, between big desperate sighs, to express himself.

“I just really want a bow-and-arrow!” he finally managed.

It had been a long day and it was difficult for me to find sympathy—yet again—for Ronan’s very big toddler feelings. The lesson I’d learned as a child—you can’t have something just because you want it—echoed in my mind, and I felt the impulse to tamp down his behavior even as I fought the motherly urge to drive to the nearest Target and fulfill his (quite recent) deepest desire. But I want my sons to learn patience and gratitude and the value of money, and I knew that giving Ronan a bow-and-arrow as soon as the hope for it had sprouted in his heart wouldn’t teach him those lessons. But I also want my children to learn that desire—a deep longing for something—is not a bad thing, that all desires are, in some ways, a part of our longing for God and eternal happiness. And shaming Ronan for expressing his desire in the only way he knew how would not encourage him to order his desires in a mature and holy way.

I didn’t have all these thoughts at five o’clock on a Thursday amid Ronan’s wailing. What I had—as we sat on our porch bench and he cried into my ear while the two-year-old began some questionable gardening of the flowerbeds—was a sense of recognition. Because what I really saw in his deep, deep want was a reflection of myself.

For over a year, my prayer for something has gone unanswered. At times, the wanting has overwhelmed me, even as I tell myself I shouldn’t want something so badly, especially when I am already very blessed. I’ve feared God’s ambivalence to my desire, have even found myself assuming that God must not care about me and my earthly wants.

But, time and time again, in my moments of sadness, of thinking I should stop hoping, I have been graced with the image of Jesus embracing me, of simply holding me as I cried. He does not shame me for my desire but consoles me in the midst of it.

So, as I sat with Ronan, I did not try to dissuade him from wanting his bow-and-arrow. We talked about how much it can hurt to want something so badly, and we came up with ideas on how he could someday get his own bow-and-arrow. When he calmed down, I told him that sometimes God places desires in our hearts so we can turn to Him in prayer. I reminded Ronan that it isn’t bad to want toys, but that toys are not the most important things in the world.

“What’s the most important thing?” I asked, taking a gamble with his nascent logic.

Putting his arms around my neck, he said, “Love.”

His answer would have made me think I was an amazing mom, if I wasn’t pretty sure he’d learned it from Daniel Tiger or Winnie-the-Pooh. Still, I was so proud of him, humbled, even, by the goodness in him, especially when moments before I’d worried about him acting spoiled. Sometimes, when I can look past the whininess, the sibling squabbles, the times they wake up too early, sometimes I can see my children the way I know God sees them: good and perfect, not for anything they do or have or want, but simply for who they are. And then, sometimes, I can accept that God sees me this way too.

Once, after Communion, I felt Christ asking to adore me, and I struggled to accept that he loved me with all my inadequacies, with all my unfulfilled desires. And I heard Him say that if I let Him, He would grant me the grace, daily, to give up trying to deserve the love He had already given me.

I’ve realized, since the bow-and-arrow incident, the gift involved with teaching my children about their wants and needs. In these early years, I am privileged to be an example of God’s love for them, to teach them who God is by my presence. The way I speak to my children about their deepest desires will become the way they understand God’s compassion. And if I want them to believe, truly, that God cares about their needs and wants, then I have to try, as often as humanly possible, to show them empathy, perhaps especially when I tell them no or not yet.

Someday, when the answer to a prayer is no, or when they face unfulfilled hopes, I want them to imagine not a God who condemns their wants, not a God who shames them or overlooks them as they come to Him in prayer, but a God who hears their prayer with understanding, who shares in their joy and their suffering, who—though He may say no—loves them beyond measure.

I fail to react with empathy all the time, but I’m thankful for the grace to try again, to persevere in my desire to be a good parent in the same way I’m called to persevere in prayer.

The Catechism says that “the virtue of hope responds to the aspiration to happiness that God has placed in the heart of every man” (1818). While I strive to teach my children that their true happiness resides in Christ, I want them to hope in earthly happiness too. This Christmas, Ronan will find something he really wants under the tree. And, to a four-year-old, a bow-and-arrow may very well be a piece of eternity.