Key Ingredients for Raising Up DreamersSample

Make Daily Deposits

The first night on the set of my sons’ third movie Woodlawn, I stood in amazement. (My sons are Andrew and Jon Erwin, Christian film directors, screenwriters and film producers.) There were more than two hundred crew members working that night. Family and friends were no longer needed to work the event, but we did get to host all the investors, pastors, and heads of many ministries who had come to watch. While I stood watching my sons run the show, I asked my Lord, How did we get here? We got there step by faithful step. I like to call them daily deposits. As moms, we have the joy of building character in our child little by little, moment by moment, day by day. We must make daily deposits in their lives early on; we can’t leave this job until they are teenagers and then decide to start training them for life. 

That night, I remembered the first set my sons built. Andy was seven and Jon was three. It was a Star Wars set that the three of us worked on constructing. It took us weeks to complete it.

When I asked Andy, “Can you tell me what was so special about the Star Wars set and the Ewok village we built?” his answer blew me away. He said, “It was you entering into my world and helping me tell a story. It was magic. It really sparked imagination. It took a lot of time and care to create. For me, that was one of the first seeds of storytelling that was planted in my development. In that I found my life’s calling as a storyteller.” 

You entered into my world. What a lesson to be learned. So often we moms don’t take the time to learn about our children’s worlds, much less to enter into those worlds with them. Mom, stop and take time to get to know your dreamer, and then dream with your child. I’m sure my household duties fell by the wayside those hours and days we worked on that set together, but what a memory we made. That memory still warms my heart. Who knows? Maybe it was one of the seeds that God used to steer my boys toward His dream for them. That set was all part of the “daily deposit” process of developing character, encouraging and building up my sons.