Ask me what makes me feel totally inept and I can quickly produce quite a list. Right up there near the top appear these two activities: teaching young children and doing craft projects.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I love little kids. I love to play with them, to make them laugh, to talk with them, to wrestle with them, and to hug them thoroughly and often. But don’t ask me to teach them … at least not when they are in bunches and need serious instruction. I’m just not very good at getting vital information from my brain to theirs. And I sure don’t know how to maintain order when I’m surrounded by a herd of revved-up kids. I can whip them into a frenzy – I just don’t know what to do with the frenzy I create.
As for the craft thing, well, let’s just say the Home & Garden Network is merely a blur on the T.V. screen as I surf from The Weather Channel to ESPN at our house. Years ago, I walked into a craft shop in late November and desperately asked the saleslady if there was anything she could teach me to make to give as inexpensive Christmas presents. She took me by the hand, led me to the cross-stitch corner and, in a few brief moments, taught me the only crafty skill I have ever learned in my entire life. That Christmas, I cross-stitched until my fingers had biceps.
I figure that as long as I am kept from craft projects and sole responsibility for classrooms of small children, the world is a safer place.
On a recent Saturday morning, I decided to go down to Magnolia Park to help with an ongoing children’s outreach ministry that has been quietly touching children in that part of Greenwood for the past few years. On the third Saturday of every month, a team of devoted, caring volunteers set up shop in the park and hold a Bible club/pizza lunch/hugfest. These folks are now receiving some help from a small army of teenagers, many of whom are students at Greenwood Christian School.
I never want to miss a good time, especially when it’s a “God thing” (you never can tell when He’s going to show up in the most surprising and exciting ways), so I decided to join the fun at Magnolia Park one Saturday. As I walked up to the registration table at the park entrance and volunteered to help, they gave me a nametag and told me I would be helping at the craft table.
As words of protest formed on my lips – “I feel compelled to tell you that you DON’T want ME to help these kids do crafts” – I bit my tongue and said, “Okay – I’ll do my best.”
For the next 90 minutes or so, I instructed hordes of children on the fine art of decorating boxes shaped like lady bugs which we were creating to hold paper clips. The kids were supposed to make the boxes for their favorite teachers at school. At times, the confusion of the whole project almost turned my brain to Jello, especially when the wind gusted and lady bug body parts scattered in the breeze.
Over and over and over, I explained how to curl the antenna and glue on the eyes, nose, and essential lady bug dots. Sometimes the kids asked me to do it for them and I found myself reliving 44 years of craft traumas. Just the smell of Elmer’s glue brought back memories of ugly construction paper monstrosities that never made it onto the refrigerator door.
Thankfully, lunchtime finally rolled around and I could eat pizza, laugh and hug kids – three things I do well. With a glazed look in my eye, I walked up to two of my friends who are teachers and said, “See this look on my face? THIS is why I am not a teacher.”
But as I laughed at the irony of being assigned to help with crafts, I also gleaned some good lessons from it all:
1. I am SO thankful for those folks God has called and equipped to teach children. They often take their gift for granted. I, however, do not. Put me in a class of first-graders for seven hours and I am quite sure you would find me at 3 p.m. in the corner curled up in a fetal position and babbling incoherently.
2. It’s good to know and accept one’s limitations. Deep down, I know I’m okay even though I don’t stencil my own wallpaper borders or know how to work algebraic word problems.
3. It’s healthy to occasionally venture beyond our areas of expertise and comfort (at least when no real harm can come from it). It gives us a deep appreciation for those whose gifts differ from ours, makes us humble and causes us to depend upon God, who tells us that our weaknesses give Him a chance to show off His strength (2 Corinthians 12:9).
4. A college degree can be a good thing. It may be the thing that keeps me from ever having to earn a living by assembling lady bug paper clip holder boxes.