I have often said: “If everyone in the world was like me, we’d all be living in caves.” Don’t believe me? Read on…
While I have a creative mind, I don’t have an engineering mind. Nada. Now, I’m good in math and science, but I can’t construct anything. For instance, my parents bought me a box of Lincoln Logs when I was a little girl. My neighbor had one, so I wanted one too. My first project was to build a log cabin. I was working on one when my dad asked: “What’re you building?” That surprised me. “It’s a log cabin. You can’t tell?” To me, it was so obvious. He scratched his head and said: “Well, it doesn’t have a door or windows.” To be honest, I hadn’t thought of them. Then I realized I didn’t know how to do that. Changing gears, I replied: “It could work on Star Trek.” They could just beam stuff in and out of it.” Let’s just say he didn’t appreciate my sense of humor. But I thought it was quite clever. I still do.
After that, I had no intention of trying to build anything else, so I gave my Lincoln Logs to a cousin. Thanks to a popsicle stick, my attitude changed when I was ten years old. I had raised the lid to the trash can to throw one away when I had a brilliant idea. Maybe I could use the sticks to build a little house. In my mind, I envisioned it to be a two-story farmhouse with a peaked roof like my grandparents’ home. That would take lots of sticks, so I had a lot of grape popsicles to eat. At one point, my mom told me I was eating too many of them. She was right. Then my dad started eating them too and gave me the leftover sticks.
Finally, I amassed enough of them to start building on the house. I washed them and let them air dry for a couple of days. After all, who wants purple sticky walls? To me, it made sense to make the walls first. I laid out 5 sticks in a row horizontally. One each side I glued a stick vertically to hold them together. After I had made a few, I realized the walls were rather plain, so I created designs in glitter on them. Then it was time to assemble my house. I stood a couple of the walls side by side and tried to glue them together, but they kept plopping down onto the table. I even tried at different angles. Nothing worked and I didn’t understand why. Needless to say, I became so frustrated. That’s when my mom informed me that I needed to frame the house before putting up any walls. She tried to show me, but I was over trying to build anything. I politely picked up my pretty glittery walls and threw them in the trash can.
I didn’t attempt to build another house again until I saw The Brady Bunch episode 54-40 and Fight. In it, the sisters and the brothers were competing against each other in building a house of cards. I thought if they could do it, then I could do it, so I grabbed my parents’ deck of playing cards. They liked to play Solitaire and Rummy. I sat down on our area rug in front of the TV and leaned two cards together where their tops were touching. To me, they resembled an old-fashioned tent. They stayed upright, so I placed two more together. They stayed up as well. I set up more cards in a row next to them. Next, I laid some cards flat across the top of them like I had seen done in the episode. They stayed stable, so I repeated the process and made another level of cards. I was excited and amazed that I was actually constructing something. Yeah, I know stacking is a better term, but in my mind, I was making small structures. Then I began to another house of cards. After I finished on that one, I built another one. Soon I had an epiphany.
I was going to build my own little town our of cards and name it Brookeville. Immediately I began to build a church, a school, library, houses, and a few stores. I not only used all of my parent’s cards, but also my grandparents’ as well. I even used my Old Maid cards. So, there sat Brookeville in front of the TV. Actually, it took up a lot of space in the living room. We all had to watch were we walked so as to not knock down the houses of cards. Even a waft of air could have caused my buildings to come tumbling down.
“ I have surely built thee an house to dwell in, a settled place for thee to abide in forever.” 1 Kings 8:13 (KJV)
My houses of cards were not steady at all. In fact, anything built by man can’t stand forever. It’s not possible. But as for The Lord, you can rest assured that the place He built will last throughout eternity. I have complete faith in that. Do you?
When Mamaw Jo came up to our house, she complained about having to walk around Brookeville. “I swannie, you all need to get those card things out of the way.” My parents refused. They saw me excited about something and wanted to encourage me. Actually, I was the one who finally took it down. Why? Because it was sitting in the place where I liked to watch TV.