Guest commentary by Carrie Martinka
My daughters can’t wait to go to church. In fact, they look forward to going to a special program twice each week to learn about God and stewardship.
I’m now in my third school year serving on the Parent’s Day Out (PDO) board at our church, First Presbyterian Church of Arlington Heights in Illinois. My daughters, ages 3 and 1, attend two days a week, which allows me a few hours of time “out” so that I can accomplish all kinds of tasks, big and small, that can be daunting with toddlers around. Even better, the two days in class allow our girls the opportunity to grow and interact with other teachers and students – all while playing games, singing songs and making crafts and art projects much better than I could ever contemplate doing at home. Basically, we all love PDO.
First Presbyterian Church provides Christian childcare to babies and children through pre-kindergarten five days a week to families in our church and community through the PDO program, which has been operating for nearly 40 years. PDO is not a day care and it’s not a preschool; it’s a few hours in the morning for parents or caregivers to receive some much-needed rest and for the children to enjoy time away to learn and play. The program has changed significantly over the years, but it’s consistently allowed the church to be a home in the community for the youngest of God’s family. When I registered my oldest daughter for PDO, I knew I’d volunteer to serve on the board – partly because “that’s just what you do,” but mostly because we are one of only a few church-member-families who attend the PDO program.
As a member of the PDO board, I quickly learned about an annual tradition the board sponsors called the Christmas Giving Tree. For years, PDO has set up a Christmas tree outside one of the classrooms to encourage families to purchase hats, gloves, mittens and scarves to be donated to a local charity for children in need. One local organization, Faith Community Homes (FCH), operates out of our church, so it seemed a natural place to benefit from our gifts of winter gear this year. Faith Community Homes was established in response to the need for affordable housing in our community. They help lower income, employed families in the Arlington Heights area obtain housing while they receive mentoring, financial counseling and other support services to take steps toward greater financial stability and independence. Last year, with help from our PDO director, I worked with the FCH coordinator to determine the ages of the children in the FCH program, and the PDO families provided an abundance of gifts. This year the FCH coordinator asked for a pair of socks and/or slippers for each of the 35 children whose parents participate in the FCH program. We asked our 140 PDO families to donate a pair of socks, a gift card toward footwear or mittens.
I am excited to bring my girls to PDO this week so we can pick out two ornaments from the Christmas Giving Tree, representing two children in the FCH program. My older daughter definitely understands the process of going to the store and buying more of something if we run out. But this year, I am sure that she can also understand that not everyone has the ability to just go get one more. This year, we will be thankful together that we can provide that hat or mitten or pair of socks to another young child. It will be years before my children can read the Bible themselves, but we read their toddler Bibles to them regularly. Matthew 25:40 (“Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me”) doesn’t always translate easily into a picture or drawing in a toddler Bible, but going to the store to pick out a gift for a child we don’t know seems to me to be a real-world attempt to explain it to our children. Our pastor, Alex Lang, joined this congregation in 2013 with the goal of making our church a “Matthew 25 church.” Our PDO Giving Tree is one small attempt to be just that.
Within a week of the Christmas Giving Tree being up at PDO, all 70 of the mitten ornaments have been claimed. This means that each of the 35 children served by Faith Community Homes will receive 2 presents from PDO. We even have parents who didn’t pick up a specific ornament in time asking how else they can contribute. It’s a fabulous feeling to see young families inspired to help others. Several of the teachers in the classrooms with older children (3- and 4-year-olds), point out our Christmas Giving Tree each time the students pass it in the hall. The tree is a visual lesson each day for these children. The tree is a reminder for me too, that even among all the stress, hustle, materialism and angst that we grownups add to the Christmas season, our children are watching what we do and how we act. Let’s show them the significance of serving others this season.
Carrie Martinka is a lifelong Presbyterian who lives in the Chicago area with her husband and two daughters. She is an attorney.
