Caitlyn came home from school today telling me all about the speaker that came to chapel this morning. He told the students about many children around the world who are starving. She wanted to know what she could do to help. She wanted to earn money to give.
In our home we have a ticket reward system. The kiddos can earn tickets as rewards(they can also get them taken away!). Then, they can cash in their tickets to purchase something, usually something that they are saving up for. I have found that it is much easier to keep up with this kind of system than to hunt for nickles,dimes, and quarters... and always have them on hand.
Caitlyn, being the oldest, is the first to really understand this system completely, and she has spent a lot of her hard earned tickets on other people.
Today, when she came home from school with the mission to earn more tickets to raise money for children who were starving, she also found herself torn. She got out a piece of paper, started counting the tickets earned in her envelope and would scribble down some numbers. I was in the kitchen cleaning up and I noticed her busy thoughts and listened to what she learned from the speaker at chapel.
She started to explain that she really wanted to buy something for Micah for his birthday as well. She was currently saving all of her earned tickets for that special occasion, but NOW she wanted to earn even more to save for the children who needed food. It really became a dramatic dilemma for this first born girl. I could tell she needed me to talk her through this one, so I took a seat beside her.
As I looked at her paper I noticed that she drew a box for each day leading up to Micah's birthday. Minutes before she asked me to tell her exactly how many days until his birthday and I handed her the calendar with the special day marked.
She then tried to figure out how many tickets she could earn leading up to his birthday that would make it possible for her to give both to the children and to her brother. We sat and talked through how to make both possible and she set a goal for how many tickets to earn each and every day until his birthday.
Then, she spent the next 45 minutes cleaning around the house to earn tickets. She cleaned the playroom (which was her brother's and sister's mess from the day), emptied trash cans, brought down every one's dirty laundry...including Mom's and Dad's, and folded clean laundry. Then she went immediately outside to tidy up. She worked until dinner. Then, after we ate she was anxious to help out in any way that she could.
It's amazing to see her maturity and her heart of giving. She is such a great example to her younger siblings, and by the end of the night she had them both excited to also help out and earn tickets.
It is during these moments that I find myself overwhelmingly blessed by how the Lord is working in the heart's of these little children, and I am reminded that I have the best job in the whole world.
3 comments:
That's so sweet. I have a similar first born girl who serves, helps, saves, gives, and challenges me in more ways than many adults even do! What a blessing our children are! What a neat story about your first born. :-)
I LOVE your pregnancy pictures! Those are so creative. Caitlyn is so sweet. What a blessing to get to see that in a child. She's a very special and unique little girl, it's fun to hear about how God is working in her life.
Awww what a sweet story. Makes me want to cry:) So good to see you and the family. If only we lived closer....
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