Dorris, the Puppeteer
I met Dorris when we moved to Urbana, Illinois, for Ray to preach. As a young mother in my early thirties, I didn’t know her long before I realized, “That’s what I want to be like when I am old.”
Dorris was childless and the widow of a minister, but she did not let widowhood and childlessness define who she was. I don’t ever remember seeing her sad.
Dorris was active with our congregation’s Golden Agers program for senior citizens, yet she was also active with children. Once when we had a talent show at church, she was in a skit with other Golden Agers. They sat in chairs behind a two-dimensional cardboard car as they turned umbrellas to look like car wheels and sang songs from the early twentieth century. As Ray and I look back, we think the skit was probably Dorris’ idea. She also loved to bring puppets to life and had a stage built to put on puppet shows for the church kids.
Dorris’ puppets and puppet stage inspired a project during our early years of homeschooling. John, Bethany, and Mary Evelyn worked on and performed a puppet show of “A Time for Everything ” from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 for the Golden Agers, using Dorris’ puppet stage.
Dorris and her husband had once lived in Japan. While there, she learned Japanese flower arranging. She often made Japanese centerpieces for events at church. She talked to me once about how she did not like it when people tried to get people to buy only things made in America. She had a heart for people in the rest of the world who also needed jobs.
We’ve been gone from Urbana now for twenty years, but we try to get back once a year. When we went for our visit in 2012, Dorris was ninety and she still lighted up when she saw us, just as she had every year since we left.
I think it was during a secret sister program at church that Dorris found out that I collected chickens. She gave me many and continued to do so even after we moved back home to Tennessee. When I learned a few months after our last visit that Dorris had gone home to be with God, I made a centerpiece in the middle of our dining room table, using the chickens she had given me.
We can let our unfulfilled dreams and losses define us or we can smile and be a blessing to the people in our lives, while we trust our precious Jesus. That’s what Dorris did. I want to be like her.
Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain,
But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.
Proverbs 31:30
Inspirational! I want to be like her too!
Dorris was a dear sweet sister that reminded us to see God in the simple things and the wonders of His creation. Dorris had an infectious positive attitude, if you were with her for only a few minutes she would be calling your attention to a flower, a tree or the sun set and it’s beauty and praising God for sharing it. I look forward to seeing my sister Dorris again. I can not think of her without smiling.
Thank you God for lighting up our lives with Dorris.
Thanks for the memory. She is greatly missed
“We can let our unfulfilled dreams and losses define us or we can smile and be a blessing to the people in our lives, while we trust our precious Jesus.”
Oh, how I need this reminder often! Thank you.