A Child Shall Lead Them

Ever notice how large children's ideas are? How they believe anything is possible? How bright and exciting everything looks through their young eyes? Those of us who are old and wise - we grown-up people who have been around the block a few times - we often tend to squelch that enthusiasm, don't we?

Several months ago, my third born came home with shiny eyes and a big idea. I listened to it silently, with all my grown-up wisdom, and subtly tried to reduce the 11 year old brainstorm down to a reasonable size. Yes, the idea sounded lovely. Yes, she was excited. But......

That's what moms are for, right? To shield their children from disappointment and disaster and help them think rationally and reasonably? Older siblings now, they aren't as kind. They roll their eyes and make snide remarks and squash big ideas; moms just nicely try to provide direction.

So, like I said, my daughter came home with this big idea...

"Me and my friend, we thought we should write a weekly newsletter for the rest of the school year and get people to subscribe for a certain amount a week to raise money for <a ministry we had recently heard about at church>! Don't you think that would be neat??" And she bubbled on and on with complicated plans for how to pull this all off while the rest of us did pretty much what I described above and her enthusiasm slowly leaked away with all our wise, older-than-you-are years of experience.

But, thankfully for my daughter, there is this man at our house who's years of wisdom have not tainted his view of the possible quite as much as the rest of us. Or maybe it's just that he's not as afraid of what people might think or how it might look, I'm not sure. In any case, he took my daughter's idea and tweaked it and added to it and helped her run with it. He silenced all the eye rolling siblings and the well meaning mom and he put himself out there and stood up on Sunday morning when they asked for announcements and told the whole church about his daughter and her friend's big idea.

 After church that day, my two youngest daughters and their friend busily went around signing people up for their newsletter. For the next 10 weeks, The Antrim Herald landed in anyone's hands who had shown interest, and the donations began trickling in for a missionary family from our church.

This was a handwritten affair that required organization and a stick-to-it-ness not many 11 year olds possess. Every week new content had to be thought of and willing writers had to be found. It didn't take long to discover that the willing writers were the hardest part. Turns out those eye rolling older siblings and the well meaning mom were the most willing contributors to be found. The whole newsletter kind of turned into a family affair, with the man of the house providing the printing abilities by taking the handwritten notepaper along to work and printing off 32 copies every week.

The Antrim Herald was a creative piece of work with anything from current school events and riddles...

To teacher interviews and original poetry...

And the ever present jokes...

The most fun was watching the girl's shining eyes as people willingly and generously donated. The idea that these girls originally thought might possibly bring in $50 - $100 turned into a growing stash that in the end came to over $300!!

I'm quite proud of my daughter and her big ideas and her perseverance. Some weeks it would have been so much easier to just skip the whole thing but she never let her readership down. I'm also quite proud of the man I married who stepped in and gave a childish idea life. He's the best.

So. Have any big ideas? Have anybody rolling their eyes at you and giving you kind, enthusiasm squelching advice? Maybe you shouldn't listen. Maybe you can do much bigger things than you ever thought possible!