As I drove down the road, the puzzled feeling remained. I was mentally going over the math. Over and over again. Always the same answer. I knew I would have to go back. I didn’t want to. We were finally on our way home. I was tired. The children were tired. You know what happens to tired children. I don’t really have to explain that here do I? But I knew them well. Hadn’t I been their closest companion since birth. They would realize that this was important. Sure they would. I explained that something wasn’t right and that we need to go back. I explained that we weren’t charged the whole sum for the dolls. I turned the car around. The man in Krogers at the register asked me to wait a minute. It was actually his fault. He was embarrassed. Soon the manager was standing before me. Tall, very tall, looking down his thin face at me. Me, disheveled and obviously poor. I was intimidated immediately. I handed him the receipt. He looked at it. I showed him the doll on the list. I told him that I want to be charged for three dolls, that I had bought three dolls. He assured me that he knew I had three dolls because he had been watching me. He had probably seen me looking at those dolls every time I came in with my children to buy groceries with our paper government money. He had probably thought he better watch that lady. Imagine that. A small frame like myself, barely scraping 125 lbs trying to hide three 18 inch china dolls in my jacket. He better watch me. I was alarmed at his statement. But I wasn’t offended by his watchful eye, I felt safe under his eye. That was my true feeling when he used that watching word with me. How can anything go wrong with a poor tiny lady of many children while under the watchful eye of a very tall and somber store manager. He still intimidated me though. I wanted to cry. I was exhausted from this day and it would have been so much easier to just go home and count my blessings. Accepting as a gift the extra dolls. Three for the price of one. Why hadn’t I just done that? But these were not my thoughts, these were the words of the man staring down at me and making me want to burst into tears. The man who had been watching me.
“God is watching me too.” I ventured. “And someday He will ask me about this, and I so need His blessing. I saved for these dolls and I want to pay for them because I don’t want to give something for Christmas which isn’t mine to give. Please, can I pay for them?” He looked down at me even more seriously than before. “I wish more people were like you.” He said. Meaning that he appreciated my wanting to pay for the dolls. “I will let you pay for them.” He beckoned me to a register which was not in use and took my money.
I left the store with less money and a happy heart. I’ve always been proud of that decision. The decision I made that day to turn around and face the manager and boast about my God and how I need Him to bless me.
I’ve made many decisions like this one. Decisions which cost me something but gained me blessings. Blessings don’t always look like dollars and cents. Sometimes blessings are no more than the rich feeling one has on the inside of not being a slave to money. The wonder in your heart when each of your children have a present under the Christmas tree. And you knowing how much it cost you to put that present there. And that feeling you have knowing that it was worth it, every bit of it.
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| Debbie with her China Doll set, Christmas morning. |
The first piece of armor the writer of Ephesians lists in chapter 6 is to have the belt of truth and the second is the breastplate of righteousness.
