Driving down the road in Montana with my friend there we saw her… a cute hunched-back lady raking leaves outside. Without saying a word my friend slammed on the breaks and said “Marissa get out and I’ll come get you later.” She knows me too well and my love for the “wiser people of this world “. It was love at first sight and she was too cute to just pass on by…
As I approached her frail body I introduced myself and asked her what she was doing raking leaves all by herself and I couldn’t let her do that. She said honey I am 90 years old and all alone but I still have enough strength to rake these leaves. So- just in those few short utterances she had my heart and I wanted to hear her story. I asked her what her secret was to being in such good health and shape for her age… she replied “walking and Jesus.” I wanted to ask her to be my Grandma, but instead I settled for a hug. I just smiled b/c since I’ve been back from Africa I miss the Go-Go’s (grandmother) so much, but God knows my heart and wanted to give me a little kiss in the form of this precious elderly bundle of cuteness.
She invited me into her house and nothing could have prepared me for the collection, dare I say obsession inside. When I walked into her living room there were over 4000 sets of eyes staring at me. Oh-now that I’ve got your attention I should explain… she has been collecting dolls since she was five years old. After 85 years of collecting dolls one might say she is quiet the connoisseur of dolls. Her 12 X 14 foot living room was covered from floor to ceiling with dolls. Where her couch use to sit now sat dolls from different eras over the decades. It wasn’t for a lack of feeling that these dolls were dearly loved that I felt a little sorrow in my heart as she began to un-fold the story of her life.
She received her first doll at the age of 5 when her mother passed away and she was taken in by her Elementary school teacher who gave her a doll. As a child in crisis she clung to her doll and received comfort and joy in the doll. One day while playing she left the doll outside and when she went back for it –it was gone. She spent next 85 years searching for the feeling of comfort that doll evoked within her. She kept most of them in storage her entire life until her husband passed away 20 years ago and then she put them out and began collecting again. Again… that void in her life has been filled with “false security” she desperately grasp at the only thing she knows of comfort. I guess there is no fear in loving a doll because they can’t love her back and she doesn’t have to worry about them dying. Standing in the middle of her living room fully aware of our need for God and His comfort my heart ached as I realized these dolls were not collectables but gauze for her heart.
We prayed together and I shared about the one who sees each tear she has cried and came to bind up her broken-heart. I reminded her that He has never left her or forsaken her- a God who is living and offers love and comfort beyond anything this world could give.
There is no one on this earth who doesn’t know suffering. We spend our lives and our time filling and borrowing what this world has to offer. So often we choose not to deal in God’s economy but in our own. The economy of God’s love has no bounds, there is no wound it can not heal, there is no need it can not meet. What are you borrowing from this world to fill your hurt or pain? What are you doing to make sense of your past? Are you willing to let God have access to your pain?
Everything the world has to offer to ease to our pain is a temporary imitation like stuffing gauze into a fatal wound. We try in our own strength to ease the pain… maybe ignoring it, running from it, or replacing it with something that looks and feels good but isn’t God.
Jesus is what our hearts are begging for, He is the creator of our hearts and therefore we can be brave by bringing our pain to Him and having hope that He will heal our wounds. I wonder what we’ve collected in our own hearts over the years and I wonder if we’re aware that Jesus is still waiting to replace the gauze with His healing balm.
