The Broken Drawer

The other day I went to put away clothes for the two little girls. I was saddened by what I found.  We keep their dresser in Kaylie's, our oldest, room.  We do this because they are at the age where they go in their drawers and change their clothes just about every hour.  They also will root through their drawers and throw clean clothes on the floor and they will mix in with dirty clothes (that are on the floor from them rooting through their dirty clothes basket).  So, to combat this we put their dresser in Kaylie's room and it has slowed them down tremendously.  Up until the other day that is.

There are very few pieces of furniture, or really anything at all in our house that we have bought new.  Almost everything we own is a hand-me-down piece.  Our living room furniture is not, we bought that a few years ago against my better judgment (it's leather, which is nice but the type that Mike wanted to buy was not good for a family with young kids and pets... within a month it had it's first hole and now, well, it's not in good shape).  One of the only other "new" things we have in our house is the dresser that the little girls share.

To be honest it took me a little while to remember why we bought it.  Then I remembered that before we have the bedroom furniture that we have now (bought from a friend who was going through a divorce) we had another set that we bought our second year of marriage.  It only had one dresser and so many years after buying that original set of furniture we bought a dresser for me to have that matched (good enough) our set.  When we bought our current bedroom furniture four years ago we got rid of that but the dresser, although probably at least 10 years old, was in perfect shape so we put it in the little girls' room, although at that time it was just Caroline's room since Madison wasn't here yet!

Because we are a lower income family, and only have one income, it's rare that we buy anything, let alone anything new.  Really, I'm good with that though.  It doesn't bother me in the least to have a friend ask if we can use something or if we want to buy something.  I regularly look at the thrift shops for good deals and we have found many good bargains this way.  It's one of the sacrifices that we know we have to make in order to maintain our large family.  God always provides for our needs so we don't worry too much about that kind of thing.

However, the other day I went in to put away little girl clothes I noticed that one of the drawers was broken.  It made me sad.  I realize that it is just a "thing" and it's not that important but to me it represented something more than just a drawer.  We don't own lots of nice things and things have a tendency to get broken in our household of children.  Because we live in our home 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and with the sheer number of people who live in this home that much, we put a lot of wear and tear on "things".  So to see this drawer, something that has been able to be maintained for such a long time and still look perfect, damaged, well, it made me sad. 

The drawer is fixable and I will fix it today but knowing that I had to is disappointing.  I guess that even though I am happy with the way my life is, knowing that we sacrifice so much to live the way we believe God is calling us to, and that are riches are more than just the things we own, I still wish that we had a bigger house and nicer things.  I hope it doesn't make me sound unthankful for what we do have.... I can't even begin to tell you how happy I am that God has blessed us so abundantly!  But, like most people, I wish I could give my kids more.  I know that I have given them what is important and that they want for nothing, but sometimes, just sometimes, I don't want all the drawers to be broken.