One week ago there was a family event at our church. Everyone was invited to come to the church on a Friday night and help decorate the sanctuary for Christmas. Not the flashiest of Friday night plans but for a guy like me with a few young kids – its just what I need. Dinner – for starters, other families (as in other adults to talk to), and meaningful, fun, and energy expending work to engage my children.
The night was a blast and it really got our Christmas season started off on the right foot.
I had an important moment while I was there and it is captured, somewhat, in the picture above.
Lights get fastened to the ends of many pews in the church. They are supposed to look like candles. They don’t although the church still looks awesome when all the lights are out at the Christmas eve service. Anyway – these long candle sticks have to secured to the pews and the electrical cords all have to be safely plugged in. As you can see in the picture, for storage purposes, the cords are tucked into cardboard paper towel rolls. So I get asked to do the job of taking all the cords out of the rolls and then making sure all the rolls get collected. It wasn’t a fun job. It didn’t really have much appeal to it at all. Just walking around the church untangling electrical cords and picking up cardboard rolls. So I rope Charlotte in and the two of us walk around the church doing this.
It was the conversation we had while walking that was amazing. Trying to work through so many valid, and observant questions and statements. “Why are we doing this?” led to an conversation on process, following steps, and following a plan. “this is boring…” led to talking about being part of a team and how everyone was helping to do something and this is what was needed right now. “how many more do we have to do?” led to counting, reaching a goal, and making sure you finish a job you start. “why do we have to collect the rolls?” led to recycling, reusing, repurposing. I could hardly believe how much ground we covered in the 20mins it took us to do the job.
Now the last thing I would want to do was to convey some notion that every interaction I have with Charlotte is this fruitful. It isn’t. In fact, the vast majority are not. Most good parenting opportunities like this one tend to sail right by me, usually unnoticed, I’m sure. For example, one can only negotiate about which snack a child will or will not eat before simply putting all the snacks away. I’m glad I caught this one though. And on Christmas eve, when we are in church enjoying how good it looks, how connected it feels and how amazing it sounds, I am going to remind her that she helped put the lights up.
3 Ginger Snaps 