A perfectly good cabinet just sat by the dumpster in the parking lot behind Toys \u201cR\u201d Us. Probably a floor model they were getting rid of, I figured. I pulled the cart right up to it.<\/p>\n
My family was in need of all the extra storage space we could find at this point. We were living on top of one another in the small house my husband, Martin, and I owned, its walls bursting at the seams.<\/p>\n
Our youngest son had stopped his college courses and moved home while he figured out what he wanted to do with his life. Our eldest had been hit hard by the recession. He\u2019d moved back home too while he looked for work, bringing along his wife and my precious grandbaby.<\/p>\n
Currently the living room was full of baby clothes and blankets in neat stacks along the walls. This cabinet wouldn\u2019t solve all our problems, but at least the living room would look a little less chaotic.<\/p>\n
It seemed like just yesterday that everything was in its place, <\/em>I thought as I went inside the store to ask about the cabinet. Then it all fell apart.<\/p>\n \u201cThat cabinet is yours if you want it,\u201d the store manager said. \u201cCheck the box out there too. I can\u2019t even remember what\u2019s inside.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the nice things about the boys being back home was that their father and I never had to do the heavy lifting. \u201cWesley, meet me behind the Toys \u2018R\u2019 <\/em>Us,\u201d I told our youngest over the phone. Once he arrived we got the cabinet loaded in my trunk.<\/p>\n Then we opened the big, oblong box and peeled back the Styrofoam wrapping. Inside was a five-foot-tall dollhouse, never been used.<\/p>\n Even the little furniture was intact: a pink bed and matching nightstand; a tub in my favorite shade of green; and a couch and lamp in baby blue, the color of my own living room at home.<\/p>\n \u201cWow!\u201d I said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe should take this too,\u201d Wesley said. \u201cLuke might play with it when he gets a little older.\u201d What a thoughtful uncle Wesley was. We\u2019d make room for the dollhouse somehow.<\/p>\n At home we set it up in the living room. Late that same night, while everyone else was asleep, I crept back in there to look at it again. I\u2019d seen a dollhouse like this before. It was long ago, when I was a child.<\/p>\n I was five or six at the time, with my mother at the drugstore. As she put her items on the counter, I spotted an elaborate dollhouse in a glass case.<\/p>\n I knew better than to ask about it. Toys were an extravagance for other children. Children whose lives weren\u2019t ruled by the chaos brought on by alcoholic parents. Certainly, a toy so pretty and expensive would be completely out of place in our ragtag home.<\/p>\n But there in the drugstore I could admire it through the glass. When I grow up, I\u2019ll marry a prince and we\u2019ll live in a nice house like that one, <\/em>I reasoned way back when.<\/p>\n A house just like the orderly dollhouse I was staring at now: everything neat and clean and in its proper place. The vow that my adult life would be different had gotten me through some terrifying and lonely times.<\/p>\n But what had it all come to? Every one of us under this roof was at loose ends. It would take more than a new cabinet to get things in order around here.<\/p>\n I went to bed with the image of that perfect dollhouse in my head. I\u2019m sorry, <\/em>I thought, drifting off. I wanted to apologize to that little girl in the drugstore. She never got the neat, clean, ordered life she\u2019d prayed for.<\/p>\n The next evening I was getting everything ready for dinner. My daughter-in-law was setting the table. Wesley and I were in the kitchen, getting the gravy just right. The others were in the den, watching the game.<\/p>\n \u201cCome and get it!\u201d Wesley shouted. We all sat down at the table. Luke squirmed in his high chair. I looked out at the well-loved faces around me\u2013faces I now got to see every night. Suddenly I felt so very thankful. \u201cLet\u2019s say grace,\u201d I announced. \u201cEveryone grab hands.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cLord, thank you for all the blessings of this life,\u201d I said. \u201cFor this food, for this home, for this family.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAmen,\u201d they all answered: my two responsible sons, my kind-hearted daughter-in-law, my adorable grandbaby, and Martin, my prince. Maybe our house was a bit crowded, but in every free inch of space was love. And wasn\u2019t that what I had really been longing for all those years as a child?<\/p>\n That orderly, neat dollhouse represented stability and safety\u2013not good housekeeping. An angel must have left that dollhouse by the dumpster to make me understand. My dream had <\/em>come true. I had the home I\u2019d always wanted. Bursting at the seams with love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A perfectly good cabinet just sat by the dumpster in the parking lot behind Toys \u201cR\u201d Us. Probably a floor model they were getting rid of, I figured. I pulled the cart right up to it. My family was in need of all the extra storage space we could find at this point. We were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28379,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[222],"tags":[19,62,158,51,70],"ppma_author":[1450],"class_list":["post-19412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","tag-angels-on-earth","tag-blessings","tag-heavenly-angels","tag-inspirational-stories","tag-mother"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n