Black Baby Doll

I got a phone call from Alyssa last week, she found a picture of me that she said I really needed to see. We are in Colorado right now, she is in Atlanta, so she said she would scan it and send it to me. While we talked she said, you know that doll you always talked about? Did she have a knitted dress on? She did.

I hit download and when the picture finally opened I was happy to see her, she was exactly as I remembered her. For some reason I didn't remember my mom having a picture of me with this doll. I loved seeing it and thinking about how my life has turned out. 

It seems so long ago, yet I remember it so clearly. 

Some of it is really painful, but I believe that the Lord took every detail and has used it for good. It is important to know some, no, most of the details didn't fit into place for a very long time. I was in my thirties before I remembered the love I had for a certain black baby doll and could see just how important she was then to my life then and now.

I grew up with a single mom until I was eight years old and she remarried. We lived in the projects near the University of Minnesota where my mom was attempting to go to school. 

She was dealing with heart breaking things that often left her unable to care for us. During this time we lived on welfare and I remember being alone a good bit. My brother and I would often been separated from my mom because she couldn't care for us.

It was soon to be Christmas, but we had no tree or gifts in our living room. I remember my brother and I sitting in the living room watching television. It was most likely the "Brady Bunch". If my mom would have been in the room it would have been the "Tom Jones" show.

(Her outfit should be a dead give away that she LOVED Tom Jones.)

There was a knock at the front door.

I remember opening the door, it was dark and cold outside with snow blowing like crazy. I could see down to the street as I looked at the man standing in front of me, a flat bed trailer like you use for a hay ride was waiting for him at the street along with a group from the Salvation Army.

I don't remember what he said to me and I don't remember if my brother got a present. I am sure he did, but as I look at the picture I don't see anything. 

This, is the only present I remember getting that year.

The only other thing I remember is my Uncle Bill coming with a Christmas tree for us.

I don't know if someone called the Salvation Army and told them about me and my brother, but I do know that I loved that doll.

I remember her dress was hand-made to fit her body perfectly. 

I loved it.

I loved her.

Looking back, someone took the time to make her a new dress so that I would have a baby doll with a pretty dress, very important when you are five.

I often say, I feel like it was a seed God planted in my life when I was so young to help prepare me for my life now.

I have told this story many times to my friends, in our newsletter and even to the Salvation Army folks who live and work in Haiti about how God can use a simple act of random kindness to prepare us for greater things to come in our lives.

I now live in a nation full of beautiful black babies. A handful of them come with their mothers to our program on a daily basis. 

I think about their lives and how different they can be because of random acts of kindness by others who care for them at a distance never meeting them.  Just like the man who took the time to deliver my black baby doll, or the woman who took the time so many years ago to make the beautiful home-made dress.

At face value, in today's world, this was not the politically correct gift. I am sure this is why the Lord says so often that we should be child like in our faith. I also think we should be mindful of how powerful random acts of kindness can be and never dismiss what the Lord can do in the heart of a child. 
A child who may be hurting, who needs to be seen and remembered.