I feel kind of bouncy today in my thoughts. That ever happen to you? You know. One minute you’re reading the Bible and thinking all spiritual and the next you’re daydreaming about why Donald Duck doesn’t wear pants or whether you have gas in the car or will you be able to find gas back home or what does home look like, anyway? I thought about the pictures of our house again. It’s really hard not to. But then I thought of one scene Nathan described to us about our bedroom.
Now, I have to explain something first. We had dolls in our bedroom. Chris’ doll from when she was a kid. Dolls that Chris’ mom actually made (one had blonde hair and looked like Chris as a baby. Three looked like our three boys, and were even dressed in clothes they wore as babies. That was really eerie!) A doll that my grandmother had in her house. I remember that one. It had short, stringy hair, a yellowed dress, and eyes. Oh, do I remember the eyes. They were the kind that opened when the doll sat up and closed when it lay down. Except this doll had an equilibrium problem (or an eye disease). Neither eye ever really opened completely. And if you picked it up, the eye had a tendency to flutter somewhere between awake and asleep, like it was in a coma. I remember being terrified of that doll as a child. I’m not sure how I ended up being the blessed one that got to have it I the same room where I slept.
Okay, as I look back, I guess I might have—in some tiny way—influenced my three sons regarding dolls. Chris saw to it that they each had one to play with. I didn’t see how that would make them any better at baseball. Anyway, Kel didn’t do so well with dolls. Or clowns. Or Santa Claus, for that matter. He seemed to inherit my inherent distrust of the little creatures. Josh came along and I was determined not to influence him one way or the other. I guess I was partly “successful”. He never really liked dolls in general, but he did have one in particular—My Buddy—who became his best pal. At least it was a guy doll. Then Nathan came along. Totally secure in his young “personhood”, Nathan had quite a collection of stuffed animals. And he often played with dolls. Of course his way of playing was having GI Joe rescue a drowning Barbie, or save Winnie the Pooh from certain death at the hands of the evil Tigger. He wasn’t so concerned about the pretend personality of the doll as he was with how it fit into the latest of the constantly-hatching schemes inside his head. So because of, or in spite of, their wonderful upbringing, all three boys had rather strong feelings about the “army” of realistic dolls that inhabited Mom and Dad’s bedroom. They were just “too real”. They might come to life and get them. (And this from kids who never saw “Chucky” until they were out of high school!)
So back to Nathan’s story. He was describing the damage in our bedroom. Bed frame twisted. Dressers upended. Cedar chest moved completely away from its position near the wall. And sticking out from under the cedar chest in what looked at best like a tragic accident and at worst like a crime scene, was an arm and a leg of one of the dreaded dolls. Its body crushed by the rampaging cedar chest. Now, please remember the intensity of emotion we are all feeling at the moment. Any little thing brings the potential of a flood (no, not that word), an explosion of stress relief. This was one of those for each of our boys—and me, too—when we heard the story. We exploded, all right, into cheers and laughter and a chorus of “Yes! All right! Evil has been conquered!” We sounded like a group of preachers at an old time revival service.
Of all the horrible sights that await me in our house, that’s the one I can’t wait to see. Know why? Well, partly because I’m a little weird. But also because it became a picture in my mind of a spiritual truth. All we see around Galveston right now is destruction and mayhem. It looks like the dust has cleared, the waters have receded, and evil has won. But that’s not the truth! Here’s the truth: “With God we will gain the victory, and He will trample down our enemies” (Psalm 60:12) “Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 15:57)
Victory. Thanks, Father. Amen
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