My son was my one reason for not giving up on life; and his small prayer changed it...

I stood at the window and watched the neighbourhood children flying their kites on the hill behind our house. Next to me, my four-year-old son Michael, pressed his face against the glass.

Ever since he had first seen them on the hill, he had been asking if he could have a kite like the other children and I always gave him the same answer: “Wait until you are a little older.” Michael hid his face in my skirt, something he always did when he was going to cry.

I felt like crying myself. I had lost three children through miscarriages and the complications that followed caused me to be constantly under a doctor's care. Because of my health I simply didn't have the strength or energy to fly a kite with Michael.

My husband worked long, irregular hours and even so we kept going deeper in debt. As a result, a tension had grown between us. It all looked so hopeless; God seemed to have forgotten us. Michael was the one spark of life left for me.

As I tucked him into bed that evening, he said, “Mommy, may I pray to God to send me a yellow kite? Maybe He doesn't think I'm too young.” “Yes,” I said. “We will leave it up to him.” Maybe that would make Michael stop talking about it.

He fell asleep with a smile on his face. The next morning I raised the shade in the kitchen and stared at the sight that met my eyes; a string hanging down in front of the window. I ran out the back door and into the yard.

Caught on the roof, with its string hanging down, was a kite. A yellow one. Michael clapped his hands and jumped up and down. "Mommy, I knew God would answer my prayer!” I didn’t believe, I realized.I lost my faith. Maybe that was why I had been so depressed.

We asked all over the neighbourhood but we never found the kite's former owner. In the years that followed we moved several times, but at each new place I would hang the kite in some corner where I could see it.

My depression lifted and as my health improved, so did my relationship with my husband. All I needed was a reminder that no matter how bad things may seem, God hears our prayers. Big or small.