Pick-Up Sticks

You know that game of Pick-Up Sticks? It makes me nervous--all that pressure to be calm and careful!

That’s how I feel about volunteering with my little tikes in tow. Nervous. I'm too afraid that our efforts will send the whole pile of sticks asunder. I could wait until the kids are older, but that seems like a flimsy excuse. Even so, many of the typical opportunities are for people who have mastered the ability to control their limbs and their mouths—-at the same time.

We're not there yet. With three children ages six and under, our family is still trying to enter any event without it feeling like the tornado has come to Kansas.

But giving back to our community is important to me, and one of the ways to pass down this value to my kids is to volunteer. Together. So I set out to find something that a family with small children could do.

“Help sack groceries at the local mart,” a friend suggested to me. It was a fine idea, but visions of spilled eggs danced in my head.

“Well, there’s the nursing home,” she continued. “Those folks love to see the kids.” Maybe so, but taking my kids to talk to strangers is the fastest way to freeze them up. And I wouldn’t exactly call “popsicled preschoolers“ a good definition for ”volunteering.”

But as the thoughts blew through my mind, I came up with a place that my kids do feel comfortable. A place they could help out.

The park.

At last! A place for them to run and scream! And serve the community at the same time. At our local park, a wind storm had recently littered the ground with sticks. Sticks! That’s just the thing for my swashbuckling sons.

So our family went and picked up sticks. And it was fun! With little pressure! And there was something that simply felt right about working together, serving our community.

And even though our little game of Pick-Up Sticks may not have revolutionized our city, I felt good about doing something. And I'm convinced that someday, all our little somethings will add up to Something:

Serving hands and caring hearts.

That's what matters far more than picking up a few sticks on a Saturday morning.