Overdue Restoration

Overdue Restoration

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord. Ephesians 6:4

My friend Marian went antique browsing one afternoon with her seventy-two-year-old neighbor, Ruth. In one shop, Ruth gently picked up a doll with soft curls.

“I used to have a doll just like this when I was a little girl,” she said, her eyes glistening. “I named my doll Hannah. And I loved her as though she were the little sister I’d always wanted. I was learning to sew and was excited about the wardrobe I would make for her.

“My father was a pastor of a small church, so we had very little. But it didn’t matter; I had Hannah. Then one afternoon, my parents came into my room while I examined a scrap of velvet from the box of material a neighbor had given my mother. The piece was just large enough to make a jacket for Hannah.

“I looked up at my parents. Both had a this-will-be-good-for-you look on their faces, as though they were about to give me some awful-tasting medicine. Then my father told me he had just visited a poor family who had a daughter my age.

“‘She’s never had a doll,’ he said.

“My heart froze as my father continued, ‘So we’d like you to give her your doll as unto the Lord.’

“Even before he finished the sentence, I was shaking my head. But my mother leaned forward and took Hannah out of my hands.

“‘Shame on you for being so selfish,’ she said. ‘You have so much.’

“I didn’t see I had so much. I only had Hannah.”

By the time Ruth finished telling the story, tears were running down her cheeks.

Marian hugged her. “Buy this doll for yourself,” she insisted.

“What?” Ruth stammered. “Buy myself a doll? I’m too old for that nonsense.”

Marian shook her head. “No, you aren’t. Buy the doll. Sew the clothes now you wish you could have sewn then.”

Ruth smiled and bought the doll. Sometimes she looks at it in the rocking chair in her bedroom and thinks maybe, just maybe, it’s the real Hannah.

—SANDRA

Lord, help me not to be harsh in dealing with the children around me. Help me to understand their world. Help me to provide loving lessons that will enlarge their hearts without crushing their tender spirits. And help me not to expect them to be the solution to the world’s problems.

The most successful parents are those who have the skill to get behind the eyes of the child, seeing what he sees, thinking what he thinks, feeling what he feels.

—JAMES C. DOBSON, PSYCHOLOGIST AND AUTHOR