Shelby, the monkey, and Bearie

Shelby, our loveable, lazy mutt, is far less than energetic. I've covered this territory extensively, I believe.

She does have one toy that she likes to play with. It's a stuffed monkey with ridiculously long arms and legs. Once, while we were away and some friends were house sitting and dog sitting, Shelby found this monkey (it had belonged to one of the girls, although they cared not a lick for it) and began enticing the dog sitters to play tug of war with her using said monkey and to throw it across the room for her to fetch.

When we returned, we were both surprised and pleased at this new endeavor of our sweet, mindless, four-legged, dim-witted friend. She actually wanted to play with us!

What we soon realized is that "play" is a relative term. And also a very short term.

She plays with the monkey for all of about 3 minutes at a time, sometimes less. And at most once a day. Usually more like once every 3 days. She can't have the monkey interrupting her naps, you see.

Remarkably, she has played with it enough that the monkey's fabric eyes have disappeared, and some of the seams are ripped open.Evidently, Shelby is freaked out by her now blind and somewhat less full monkey, because she has abandoned it for another stuffed animal that she found: Bearie, the weirdly purple bear. Now, Bearie is the toy she grabs for her extremely brief times of play.

Jenna was sure that this caused some amount of concern, and possibly even depression, for poor monkey and concocted a photo essay to document this tale of scorn and abandonment.

Shelby, favoring the fully sighted and much plumper Bearie, keeps the purple bear close by while monkey waits wearily beneath the corner of the recliner, hoping no one chooses to rock and thereby crush her physically, just as she has already been crushed emotionally.Bearie taunts monkey as he (she? it?) gloats in her new friendship with Shelby and demonstrates her favored status by proximity to the wonder dog as monkey slumps despondently. Bearie: "She likes me best! Don't even think about trying to get back in her good graces. I'm purple. You're some sort of non-descript beige...without eyes!"
Monkey: "Maybe I can just climb on the precious dog's back and bask in her warmth. Oh, Shelby...what went wrong?"Shelby: "Huh? Why am I awake? Did somebody say treat?"

Braces!

Both Karen and I were blessed with blissfully straight teeth. Mine have a small space on my lower rack and a slight overlap on the top shelf, while Karen's are all perfection. Neither one of us had to have braces.

So how is it that all three of our children have had to have those wretched instruments of torture installed in their mouths?

Anya's bout with canker sore-inducing metal has already come and gone and she has now joined her parents on the "Ready for the Orbit gum ad" list. Her sisters are just beginning the many months of subjecting their teeth to the modern equivalent of the rack.

Here are their jack-o-lantern smiles in need of straightening.And the wide open view.They've both got one of those pointy corner guys that refuses to drop, so it will require varying degrees of mouthular manipulation (and perhaps surgery for Em -- ouch!) to pull those into place.

We've made the initial visit to OrthodonticLand (which let me tell you, is not nearly as fun as DisneyLand but a WHOLE lot more expensive) and have come out with part one of the metallic installations, more specifically, the upper deck.In another month or two, they'll add the basement torture chamber.

But for now, we begin the many caramel-free, starburst-free, any-gooey-yummy-candy-free months until the braces have done their work and those teeth line up like the good little soldiers they should be.

Doubtful

Today at UpStreet (the kids' worship and teaching part of our church on Sunday mornings) we talked about Thomas. You know the guy. He's so famous he got another name permanently attached to him: Doubting Thomas.

All month long at UpStreet we're looking at friendship, which we've defined as spending time with someone you trust and enjoy. And we're using the events of Easter and the weeks following Easter to help kids understand what it means to be a true friend. That brought us to Thomas today, he of the doubting.

What we tried to help the kids understand is that Jesus didn't give up on Thomas because he had doubts. He didn't even walk away and say, "Too bad you missed me the first time, loser, because I'm not going to show up again. Deal with your doubts on your own, you big untruster-pants." (I secretly wish that Jesus talked that way. Perhaps that's exactly the way Jesus came across in Aramaic. I'm pretty sure everything in Aramaic sounds sarcastic)

No, instead, Jesus comes back and allows Thomas to see what he said he needed to see in order to believe...the nail scarred hands, the wounded side of Jesus. And what I hope the kids got is that Jesus is okay with our doubts, but that because He is an incredible friend, He wants to help us believe. He's patient with us. And that if we're going to be a good friend we'll help others believe as well, we'll encourage them, not give up on them. We'll walk along side them, not push them away because they believe differently or don't quite get why we care about Jesus so much.

I love Thomas because he encourages me. I have doubts about my faith at times. There's periods in my life where I question the goodness of God or His involvement in my life. There's also times when I don't struggle with any of that, when I know what's absolutely true.

Why Thomas encourages me is because I see that none of his doubts changed anything. Whether Thomas believed that Jesus was alive or believed that Jesus was dead and the other disciples were nuts didn't change what was true: Jesus was alive! And Thomas could have gone on doubting and wondering until he died, but it didn't change what happened. Jesus was dead, and then came back to life.

My times of doubt don't change anything either. God is not lessened by my questions, He is not shrunk by my limited grasp. No matter what I'm struggling with, He is unchanged. And if I continue to be honest with my questions, I will find answers, much as Thomas did. Certainly not in the same way, and probably not in the same amount of time. (Thomas only had to wait a matter of days to find the answers he was looking for. I've found that God often makes me wait a little longer than that.)

And as I struggle with my doubts, as I search for answers or seek to understand what, in the name of all that is holy, God could possibly be doing, He remains the same.

The bonus? While He is constant, I come away changed, and with a better grasp of just who this Jesus is that I serve. Being an untruster-pants does lead to new horizons.

But those new horizons are rarely as comfortable as the horizons I leave behind.