Leave the bathroom light on.

Since Amanda has been here, I am at once both sorrowed and positively gleeful of how much she really does seem to be like me. I hate that she feels such despair. I sigh at some of the things she so assuredly believes is true about life because I know that she will see things much differently as she gets older. I hate to tell her that when she gets older she will find that its not near as bad as she thought...its far, far WORSE!

There's not one demon behind that rock, Dear Sylvia..there are ten.

Or are there?

It makes me cock my head to the side in deep thought when I think about how Amanda was as a child. She had her own room being the only girl for so many years and was like me as a child with an assortment of dolls and animals she truly believed depended on her care. After years of stepping on matchbox cars and legos, I was delighted to fill my little girl's room with miniature but usable versions of the very tools I used. Tools that I myself coveted of my own mother. By the time I was done, her room was a little homemaker wannabe's dream. She had a doll crib with a satin blanket. She had the cool doll stroller that converted from a baby carriage and into a baby carrier...just like the latest real version I had from Walmart for Zachariah. She had the whole she-bang. Walker, playpen, high chair, you name it, she had it all in one child sized bedroom. Not only did she have everything a little girl could possibly ask for her DOLLS, but she also had the cool Little Tykes Play Kitchen complete with coffee pot and a toaster that popped plastic bread.

As I sit here in my room across from my daughters I am wondering how much my version of this world resembles God's.

So whats with the laundry, Lord? Laundry MUST be a part of your job because I just can't get away from it! What am I supposed to be learning here? That it's just a part of life that our dirty laundry gets mixed in with freshly laundered Island Fresh Gain undies? Are you sitting up there CONTENTED listening to me prattle on and on to myself about my little world like I used to listen to Amanda talking to her tiny plastic babies?

Lie to me, Lord. Don't tell me that it's not near as bad as it seems that it could be worse like I think to say to Amanda.

Tell me that everything is fine. Tell me that it's all good and there's nothing to fear. That there is nothing to be afraid of. Tell me that all I have to do is try to be like you and make toast. Everything is fine.


Wow. I swear I didn't try for it to come out that way.