Sheer Genius…and Its Mom

Sheer Genius…and Its Mom

Have you seen the Piano Guys video of their ren­di­tion of Angels We Have Heard on High that’s been float­ing around on Face­book recently? I saw the video link for days upon days before I finally clicked on it tonight. Incred­i­ble. For those who haven’t seen it yet, here’s the link: Piano Guys: Angels We Have Heard on High I’ll wait while you go lis­ten to/watch it.

So, I just watched this, and do you know what went through my mind?

What kind of moth­ers did these men have?

That’s what I won­dered. I imag­ine that they had to actu­ally spend time explor­ing in order to get to the place where they are so com­fort­able around the piano to play with it like that. This is not nor­mal, folks. In case you didn’t notice, most peo­ple don’t do these things with a piano. They are com­fort­able with it. They aren’t afraid of get­ting it wrong.

And their moth­ers likely let them explore more than I think I have done with my kids.

Here’s the deal: I’m a rule fol­lower. And those guys, they are break­ing a lot of rules. And it’s magical.

Here’s to allow­ing our chil­dren break some rules in the name of explo­ration. Here’s to let­ting go of the fear of the unknown and allow­ing them to expand their under­stand­ing of things. And run­ning with it. They might actu­ally sur­prise them­selves and every­one else in the process. This is sheer genius. But it isn’t in a box, neat and tidy, and fol­low­ing anyone’s rules. Cre­ativ­ity is like that.

I’m inspired to let my chil­dren play around with things in ways that seem out of the ordi­nary. Not in a destruc­tive way, but in a way that I might not have ever con­sid­ered before. I don’t want to be the lim­it­ing fac­tor in their lives. God gives some peo­ple eyes to see things dif­fer­ently than we do. Do we fight that or embrace it? Why do I strug­gle with this con­cept? Why do I rein them in when they are think­ing of unique ways of tack­ling a project or a prob­lem? I think I am try­ing to save them from mak­ing mis­takes and wast­ing time. Or from being seen as silly or unusual. But, it is in the dif­fer­ent that our imag­i­na­tions are cap­ti­vated. Bril­liant minds do things dif­fer­ently than the sta­tus quo.

And I’ll bet they have moms who give them the free­dom to explore. Let’s be those moms.

Photo credit: Pinterest

It’s pretty cool…

It’s pretty cool…

Today, I had Emma and Faith with me as we were dri­ving to a friend’s house. I was flip­ping through the radio sta­tions try­ing to find some­thing suit­able to lis­ten to, when I came upon a sta­tion that had a famil­iar Chris­t­ian song play­ing. As the song played, Faith noted, “Isn’t it cool that this is on the radio?” The song was full of God’s grace and the fact that His Son came to die for sin­ners. Yes, it’s pretty cool that we can turn on the radio and find the gospel sung to us, or preached to us on sev­eral sta­tions at any given time. What is equally “cool” is that Faith rec­og­nizes what a won­der­ful gift that is.

When we lived in Eng­land, they had no such sta­tions, at least broad­cast­ing where we lived. It was shock­ing to us to find that when we lived there. From our under­stand­ing, it isn’t eas­ily per­mit­ted because of  “items that may be offen­sive to peo­ple of other, non-Christian beliefs”. Makes me won­der about whether or not the radio author­ity is con­cerned about whether or not Chris­tians are offended by some of the other things that are broadcasted.

So, while we may despair at how our coun­try is slid­ing away from our Chris­t­ian her­itage, let’s be thank­ful for these things we often for­get to be thank­ful for. I love it that Faith reminds me of them daily.

 

Photo credit: Bran­don Christo­pher War­ren / Foter.com / CC BY-NC

 

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