Long time, no blog . . . due to no time to blog. But here I am, a little refreshed after barreling through a pretty rough period in our lives. I promise to do better from now on. 
So today as I was playing with Baby Girl, I suddenly remembered the dollhouse I wanted to badly when I was little, and almost got. I dreamed of having the grand Victorian dollhouse with pretty little shutters, a winding staircase and all the teeny-tiny, perfect furniture my house could hold. I honestly don’t think I even wanted to “play” with it. I could have cared less about the dolls. I just wanted to arrange and re-arrange the furniture. I begged for this dollhouse. Pled my case to the Great Claus. Every time we went to the hardware store where they had the kits I would sigh and look doe-eyed up at my dad and say something dramatic like, “Oh Daddy, isn’t that a pretty dollhouse?” Yes. I was that kid.
So one Christmas, I think I was nine or ten, my time finally arrived. I got the dollhouse! Only, it wasn’t quite how I had imagined. See, I figured my dad would have it all built already, pristine and perfect on Christmas morning, just waiting for me to fill it with a Barbie’s truckload of furnishings. Instead, it was a rather large, square box with the picture of the pristine, perfect dollhouse on the front – assembly not included. Darn. Darn!
I still don’t know why my dad didn’t put the goofy thing together for me, but I can guess that he knew full well the extent of the snoopiness of my sisters and I. We went to great lengths to known what those wrapped treasures beheld, even Heather and I holding little Savanah’s torso and legs while she searched for gifts in the closet under the stairs with a flashlight. Shame! He knew I’d find the thing before Christmas morning. It was the only way. Sheesh. Even then, I was my own worst enemy!
Despite the box, I was thrilled to finally have my prize! I would be the envy of all my friends. I would sit daintily in my room and play for hours on end like something out of one of my storybooks. . . . The reality was that I would have to put the stinking thing together first. Obviously, I immediately took to nagging my dad about it. He is a carpenter, after all! But dad said, “Wait. It’s Christmas. We’ll start on it later.” Sigh. OH-KAY Dad.
Well I waited a whole two days and despite my nagging, we still had not begun the dollhouse project. My dad had to go back to work, and we were still on Christmas break. One afternoon I decided enough was enough. If my dad was going to be so slow and helping, I would just do it myself. After all, we had a garage full of tools, wood glue and I had an above-average reading level. How hard could it be? This is where having any knowledge of the Bible would have come in handy:
Luke 14:28 “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.” (ESV)
So I gathered the materials and tools I could find and got to work. Sort of. After reading the directions, it was obvious that without help, it was going to take a really, really long time. I was a ten year old girl with little patience. Really, really long time was not in my vocabulary. I think I was hoping I could pull a Mary Poppins and magically snap the house into being. I cast the directions aside and just sort of started pasting and/or hammering things together. After many hours it was obvious that not only did I NOT have a beautiful, Victorian dollhouse, I had totally ruined any hopes of my materials becoming a beautiful, Victorian dollhouse. What I had – was a pile of sticks. Gluey, broken sticks. And I had splinters.
Of course, my dad discovered what I had done (my mother said, “I told you so.”) and he wasn’t even that angry. I was good at punishing myself. I cried and cried. I moped. I took the sad remains to the trash and moved on. Did he ever buy me another dollhouse? Nope. Did I ever ask for one again? I am not that brave.
So, this story got me to thinking about my relationship with my Heavenly Father. How often have I impatiently marched out on my own, to do my own thing, casting the “instructions” aside only to be left with tears and splinters? Ugh. Too many times.
John 5:19 “Jesus replied, ‘I assure you, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does.’”
a butternut squash, weighing in at 5 lbs. It’s a favorite of babies, usually a first food as it has little chance of any allergic reaction. I got some Gerber first for Lyla to try because preparing this bad boy was a 2 hour job. She loved it, so on my last grocery trip, I purchased this – and got an odd look at the register. Guess they don’t sell a lot of them?
