She’s an American Girl

I don’t know how you approach Christmas gift-giving with your children, but we typically get each of ours a Big Thing and then a few smaller ones.  We don’t go crazy but Luke and I love surprising our kids with the best we can manage because for the most part they are grateful.  Don’t get me wrong, they ask for some things that are extravagant (ponies, 4-wheelers, laptops, etc.) but they will also ask for things I consider everyday essentials.  For example, Boy Three has requested lead pencils this year.  Lead pencils.  As opposed to quill and ink?  I didn’t know there were any other kind.  And also, we must be experiencing some pencil shortage I don’t know about because last time I checked the desk drawer was overflowing.  I could simply cross that one off the list but because I think it’s so sweet, you can mark my words I’ll be shopping for the coolest lead pencils EVER.  Better than he could ask or imagine.  And all because I know he was content to ask for this small thing. 

{I’m feeling a sermon illustration all wrapped up in that somewhere but I’ll spare y’all my trying to dig it out right now.}

It was sad for me last year when I realized the boys were no longer asking for Nerf Guns or Rescue Heroes or John Deere tractors.  Now everything is an electronic gadget or a game to play on said gadget.  Or some type of knife or weapon – particularly air soft guns.  {Do any of your boys play air soft?  Do any of your boys spill the pellets onto the hardwood floors and do you lose your mind every time you hear one roll across the room?}   Since the boys have graduated toys, I’m treasuring these last couple of years The Girl is interested in them.

For the past 3 months, she has been asking for an American Girl that “looks just like me, momma!”  I have to tell you that I got The Twitch when I looked on the website and saw the cost.  However, it was the only thing on her list except for an Easy Bake Oven and Taylor Swift cd.  Don’t know how I feel about giving that to her.  Right now, I’m just grateful she is over Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus who needs to just quit waving the name of Jesus if she is going to pole dance and give props to Britney in that ridiculous Party in the USA song.  Just sayin’.  Let’s move quickly from that soap box.

So back to the American Girl doll.  My girl picked this one from the Just Like You collection because, well, it looked just like her.  I ordered her, twitched some more at checkout,  but was then oddly comforted by the fact the rest of her list could be bought with $50 or less.  I was excited I’d gotten that taken care of early (miracle) and then began studying up on all the expectations that come along with owning the doll.  Come to find out, I’ve done my daughter as well her new friend an injustice if I don’t drive them both to the Atlanta store for a luncheon and a trip to the hair salon.  It’s positively neurotic. 

I made our reservations  for the end of January.

All that said, The Girl and I were at Walmart a couple days after I placed the order and I decided to take her through the toy aisle just to see if there was anything else she might like since we’ve not toy shopped in a very long time.  That’s when we found Kaitlin – a lovely Best Friend Club doll posing as an American Girl.

Would you like to know what The Girl said when she saw her?  “I love her a whole lot more than the American Girl because she has a diary with a lock on it!” 

Let me walk you through what I was thinking in those split seconds:

1.  This doll is $29 instead of $95.   I could have gotten away with spending 1/3rd less cash and she would have been just as happy?

2.  In addition to spending a stinkin’ fortune on the doll, I’d already bought into the powerful delusion of The American Girl World.  A world where good mommies buy their daughter’s plastic friend a $15 salad and pay more for her pj’s than I spend on an entire outfit. 

3.  The power of this delusion also caused me to be sickly disappointed that my American Girl dreams were flying right out of the window because there was no way the AG people were going to serve this impostor nor fix her hair.  Alas, it appeared I would have to cancel that reservation.

So what to do?

I talked to Luke to get his advice because dudes always know how to handle doll emergencies.  And with a love that can only be described as scandalous towards his only daughter he said, “Let’s give her both.”  We reasoned that since the doll was already paid for, it would take weeks to get her returned and then see the money back on our debit card.   And besides that, The Girl changes her mind almost as much as she changes shoes and purses so there was still hope yet that she would turn her heart yet again to the doll who was Just Like Her. 

And I was right.  I told her I had called Santa to change her Christmas List from the AG to the BFC doll.  She said, “You don’t know Santa’s number.”  And I said, “Yeah-huh, I do.  They give it to moms at the hospital when they have their first baby.”  She said, “Seriously?”   I said, “Well, of course.  Everyone knows that.”   She said, “Well, will you call him again and tell him if I have to pick one that I want the American Girl because one day I want some pajamas to match her?”  And I said, “Yes.”   And just like that we were back on.

 So on Black Friday, I was delighted to find a Kaitlin doll to add to the baby girl’s collection.  I know it is positively western of us to do such a thing.  But the truth of it is, my girl is an American Girl who thanks God every night in her prayers for giving her ‘all of the things that lots of kids don’t have.’   The thing is, she doesn’t deserve either of them but in a show of grace is getting them both.

And I  like to think God is okay with that.  

However, it is still unclear what He’s going to think about that trip to the Hair Salon.

November 30, 2009 | Filed Under Holidays, Parenting or Lack Thereof, The Girl | 23 Comments 

Thankful Thoughts and a GiveAway Winner

It was so fun reading your comments on the Fit Band Giveaway post about your Black Friday plans. I think it is safe to say that we either have a love or hate relationship with shopping on that day. Personally, I adore it so much so that I wrote it into my pre-nup that Luke would never keep me from lighting out at 4 a.m. nor pressure me to be home by any certain time.  In exchange, I don’t pout. 

Believe me, it is a fair trade.   Just ask Luke.

As for the shopping, I’m with all of you who said it’s not so much about the actual buying as it is the thrill of the hunt with your best girlfriends. I think my favorite comment was from Carrie who said, “My husband, along with his two brothers and dad, get up at the crack of dawn to be at the stores to wait for them to open. They love the crowds so they take the “lists” and get as much as they can find. All the women sleep in, meet the men for lunch, and then decide if we want to venture out ouselves.”

They love the crowds. They shop. Then they meet you for lunch to debrief you. Carrie, 98% of the women who are reading this have officially fallen in love. Guard those guys with your life or you are likely to have a rush on them like hasn’t been seen since the Sears smackdown I witnessed over Cabbage Patch dolls during the Christmas of 1983.

Now it’s time for me to announce the winner of the Fit Band.  I would like for you to notice the official results tabulated by Random.org complete with screen-printed results.  I chose this method rather than asking one of my kids to pick a number between 1 and 64 or point at the screen as I scroll up and down really, really fast.  In fact, you could say this contest has an air of professionalism to it that has been strangely absent in others.  Because if there’s anything I want you know, it’s that you either won or lost legitimately.  Because that’s important on blog contests.

Okay, webmaster, drum roll please…. (there is no webmaster but again, we are taking legit to the next level):

The winner is  …..

fitbandrandom

Andrea on November 23rd, 2009 6:47 pm      #51
“I will shop on Black Friday with my husband as the package carrier.”

 

And yet another woman with a fabulous husband!!   Congratulations, Andrea!  (On the husband and the contest.)  I don’t have contact info for you so please shoot me an email so I can forward it to Erin and Mary Jo.  Thanks for the generosity, girls~!

Okay, I’ve got to jump off here.  We are taking the kids to see Old Dogs as a Pre-Thanksgiving treat.  In case you didn’t know, I’m so grateful for this little community and appreciate your stopping by when you can.  Praying your family has a blessed Thanksgiving full of food and lacking in drama. 

Wait, that’s my prayer for myself but I’ll say it over you as well.

Happy Thanksgiving! 

 

November 25, 2009 | Filed Under GiveAway, Holidays | 5 Comments 

The Divine Paradox

There are many reasons I love being married to a preacher man but one of the privileges of that role is being present by (what I hope is not a begrudged) default during the hallowed days in the lives of people we love.  We relive our own wedding vicariously through yours wishing we had been believers when we had married.  We rejoice again each time you bring a new life into this world both by birth and baptism.  When you say goodbye to your loved ones, we grieve with you and do our best to minister out of our own experiences of loss. 

During a short 2 hour span Monday, the Lord allowed me to both hold Deedra’s precious baby Walker for the first time and laugh at his adorable big brother and sister as they showed off ‘their baby’.  Straightaway, I went to hold my sweet friend Jenni and cry with her shortly before Randall went to be with the Lord.  Later that afternoon I sat on my bed staring into nothingness as I thought about how far the pendulum swings.  About the great expanse between life and death; the enormous arc between joy and sorrow.

The amazing thing about a pendulum is how very close one comes to making a full circle not unlike The Flying Dutchman at an amusement park.  If one extreme is sorrow and the other joy, then at the top of that arc the two are practically in kissing distance.  And there lies – or flies – paradox.  It’s in that terrifying limbo that we find unexplainable peace.  Where in our loss we are found.  When we are convinced yet again that God was holding us all along even when it felt He had left us hanging midair. 

I personally despise the Flying Dutchman.  Every time I’ve ever been on one I’m convinced that I’m that one person for whom gravity will fail and I’ll go crashing to the ground.  And yet, here I sit on sure ground proven wrong time after time.  In the words of Mr. Hopeful in The Pilgrim’s Progress, “Be of good cheer, my brother, for I feel the bottom, and it is sound.” 

Are there any out there who feel the bottom has fallen out?  It would be hypocritical for me to assure you that you are held if I hadn’t experienced being caught midair so many times.  No, I’ve not lost my husband or grown child, but there are other devastations that have pushed us to the brink of faith.  That being the case I can confidently say, you will get through this.  There will be a day when you are going about the course of things when you stop and realize the pain of this day is not prevailing as it did the day before.  I daresay you will even smile again.  There are many things I do not know, but this I do:  Now matter how scary the How, I can rest knowing I am safe in the Who.  The same one who called Peter to the Waves and Moses to the Sea has not chosen this day to forsake His children.

Sweet Jenni and girls:  I pray when you are desperate to see Christ, that you will only need look around to see Him in the faces of those who love you.  That you will be bold in your fear.  That you will find some unexpected joy in the midst of this sorrow.   That you will remember your husband and father with a smile through your tears.  

 That is the divine paradox and it is there you will find Him waiting.

November 24, 2009 | Filed Under Grief, Prayer Warriors Unite | 14 Comments 

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