Savannah recalls comment from daughter Vale after her baptism that gave her ‘a lot of joy’

Savannah Guthrie says she was touched by a sweet comment her daughter, Vale, made when she was recently baptized.

While chatting with TODAY.com about her new book, “Mostly What God Does: Reflections on Seeking and Finding His Love Everywhere,” Savannah opened up about her children's relationship with religion and said they have a "really sweet faith."

For instance, the TODAY co-anchor says her 9-year-old daughter was "so excited" at her baptism and said something that day that touched Savannah "so deeply."

"She said, ‘Today, God, I joined your family.’ And that gives me a lot of joy,” Savannah says.

Savannah also has a 7-year-old son named Charley, and she says she's enjoying the process of guiding her children as they navigate their own faith journeys.

“I’m trying to make God the fifth member of our family. So yes, we pray and, you know, God is very much a presence in our family and church and all those practices,” she says.

Savannah's husband, Mike Feldman, is Jewish, so the couple is raising their children in an interfaith family and will let their kids make decisions about their own relationships with faith.

"What I know is that it's my job to give them the building blocks to teach them about the God that I know and help foster that connection. And then I also know that when they grow up, it will be their choice. And it's just my job to give them as much information but also experience with God as I possibly can," she says.

Savannah says she wrote the book for her children and dedicated it to them. She describes the book as "everything I would want to tell them."

"If I died tomorrow — not to sound morose — it’s what I would want them to know about the God that loves them. It’s pretty much everything I could think of to put on paper," she says.

Savannah certainly hopes her children will like the book and read it in its entirety one day. For now, she's pleased that Vale has read "quite a bit of it."

"She approves, especially the parts about her," she says.

Vale has also read some parts of the book out loud in front of her little brother, who had a mixed reaction to learning about one excerpt in particular.

"He doesn’t love that, like, there’s a part about how he threw the (toy) train at my eye when he was 2. He’s like, 'Did you have to tell that story?'" Savannah explains, referencing a 2019 accident that caused a tear in her retina.

Overall, though, Savannah says her children like the book and that she's excited for them to dive deeper into it when they're older.

"It’s for later in life. I hope that they come to appreciate it," she says.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com