Kids are kids.
Ray and I had been married ten years when we bought our first new living room set. The couch we used when we were first married had belonged to my grandparents and then to my parents. By 1974 it was in storage in my parent’s basement. With Mother’s help, Ray and I reupholstered it in a busy Early American print. Later we used a brown hide-a-bed that had been Ray’s parents. Finally, in 1985, as we were preparing to move from Oxford, Mississippi, to Urbana, Illinois, we purchased an inexpensive rust and beige velour couch and chair.
On the day that our new furniture arrived, our sweet little toddler found a black felt tip marker and scribbled on the couch. I panicked, ran to the cabinet above the washer and dryer, grabbed the first cleaning product I could find (I don’t even remember what it was), and scrubbed. The marker disappeared.
Bethany, Mary Evelyn, and John stand
in front of our new couch in our new
living room in Urbana the following fall.
Our little girl was not a problem child—really, she wasn’t—but she was the culprit in each of our furniture incidents. While still little, she drew with a green paint pen on the rung of a ladderback chair. It is there to this day. I didn’t have the heart to remove it. While I wasn’t ready for our new couch to have black marker decorations on the day it arrived at the house, the green paint down there near the floor didn’t bother me. It made me remember our youngest when she was little.
Her third and last furniture catastrophe happened years later when she was about 8 or 9. The rust and beige furniture was relegated to the basement den, and we bought a new set. When her wet hair made a wet spot on the seat cushion of the brand-new chair, she hurried to get my hair dryer to “fix” the spot. The heat burned a hole right through that manmade upholstery fabric. The fix for the fix was simple. We turned over the cushion! At least the couch cushions were still reversible.
Kids are kids. They are going to make mistakes. Adults are, too. Family is the first place we learn that.
And He has said to me,
“My grace is sufficient for you,
for power is perfected in weakness.”
Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast
about my weaknesses, so that
the power of Christ may dwell in me.”
2 Corinthians 12:9
Such a sweet reminder. ♥️