That Doll is an Albatross

[The following article was published in the Nov/Dec 2015 issue of Live Magazine under the title, "Gratitude is a Position". Check them out at www.baptistwomen.com]

One year when I was little, in the weeks before Christmas, I saw a commercial advertising a doll that came with special pens that changed the colour of her clothing. I wanted that doll so badly.  It was like a gnawing hunger that I couldn’t satisfy. I had no money, but Christmas was coming and so I wrote to Santa with my request naming the doll by name. But, hedging my bets on the kindly old elf’s existence, I was shrewdly certain to show my mother the letter before asking her to mail it. I showed her the doll in the store when we were there buying presents for others. I prompted her with all the subtlety and ingenuity my seven year old self possessed. But when Christmas morning came and the abundance was revealed, I hadn’t received The Doll. 

I had been given a different one. It was sweet--a true baby doll--but I wasn’t satisfied. I remember moping because want was still gnawing at me. I was disappointed because what I had received wasn’t what I had requested. It seemed second rate. My mother noticed my deflated expression and asked what the problem was. I am ashamed to say that somehow I communicated my discontent. My mom was hurt and disappointed in my reaction to her gift. In an uncharacteristic move, she returned the sweet baby doll and purchased its garish replacement. I learned the deceptive nature of advertising that day.  The Doll was a clunky and an inadequate imitation of what my desire had built it up to be. The pens barely functioned and trying to use them was an exercise in frustration. I didn’t like it. I had hurt my mom for nothing and I wanted the baby doll back. 

For years I kept that gaudy doll--the object of my desire--in its original box in my closet; an albatross of my discontent hung disconsolately around my neck. Whenever I caught a glimpse of it, I felt sick. I had been disappointed before I received it, and I felt disappointed afterwards. It was a powerful lesson. Gratitude is more than just thankfulness. It is about position. It is about who we are in relation to the Most High. My mother could discern a better gift for her child than I could for myself. She knew about deceptive advertising and poor construction. She knew what was a good gift and what was just junk.

In the last few years I haven’t been content with where God has planted me. I wanted something different and it gnawed at me and killed my creativity and made me unhappy and hopeless as I lay awake at night. I have been like Eve in the Garden and spent too much time staring at the one tree He hasn’t given me for food; obsessing about how amazing that fruit must taste, that I have ignored, or disdained all the trees He has given.  I’ve been ungrateful, but I never would have called it that. The source of my discontent seemed justified and so I deceived myself into thinking I knew better than God. If I truly recognized my privileged position as His child, I wouldn’t have spent the last few years making sure He saw how disappointed and discontented I was.

I’m a slow learner when it comes to lessons that apply to my own fears and pain. I hide them tightly, preferring only to whine at God rather than letting Him reveal what He wants to give me. And, if I’m being horribly honest, a lot of the time I don’t even want Him to reveal what He wants because I’m afraid I’ll think it is second rate. I’m afraid I’ll feel disappointed like I did that Christmas morning. But the lasting sting of the whole doll debacle was not in the disillusionment that it brought. The pain that still clutches at me is that my ingratitude hurt my mother. I don’t know if I had ever realized that I had that power over her before, but once discovered, it was a horrible burden.  The horror of that burden magnifies exponentially when I realize that I’ve been doing the same thing to my Heavenly Father and I’m not seven anymore.  (Mercifully, there is nothing to stash in my closet to emotionally cut myself with for years to come.)

God is good and as I reject the pride of thinking I know best, that gnawing feeling of want begins to weaken.  As I submit to His plans, He reveals that what He wants is for me not to be afraid of disappointment; not to hoard pain.  He wants to reveal more of Himself so that I can gladly proclaim that a greater share of God isn’t second best, but the best in every case. He wants me to get the message that contentment and gladness are never about what I have, but about to whom I belong.