Dear Lord, I would have loved to have held my babies on my lap and tell them about you, but since I didn't get the chance, would you please hold them on your lap and tell them about me?

This anonymous prayer circulates widely in modern grief and faith communities, especially among parents mourning miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant loss. It is typically shared in sympathy cards, memorial services, online support forums, and devotional compilations rather than traced to a single identifiable author or publication. The wording frames bereavement in explicitly Christian terms—addressing God as “Dear Lord” and imagining the deceased children being held by Him—reflecting a contemporary pastoral style that blends intimate domestic imagery (a child on a parent’s lap) with the hope of divine care. Because it is transmitted informally, it often appears without attribution beyond “Anonymous.”

The speaker expresses a double grief: the loss of the children and the loss of the ordinary, tender acts of parenting—holding them close and teaching them about faith. The prayer turns that absence into a request for consolation: if the parent could not nurture and introduce the children to God, God can now nurture the children and preserve the parent’s bond by “telling them about me.” The reversal is poignant: the parent asks God to become the caregiver, while also keeping the parent’s love and identity present to the children. The quote’s power lies in its simple, domestic metaphor for heaven as a place of continued relationship rather than mere separation.