Even there your hand will guide me . . . that's what the picture said

Rough day at our house yesterday. A souvenir Cardinals bat flew from John's hands and crashed into the glass on a picture that has hung on our wall almost all of our married life. It's a sail boat - we really like those. And we admired it in our church's bookstore for a really long time. It cost ninety gigantic dollars, and it was a crazy miraculous surprise when Michael bought it for me for Christmas anyway. Now those children we produced have broken it.

I freaked completely out of course. And sent them to their room while I tried to decide how in the world to handle it. They get told so many times a day not to play ball (or bat-and-balloon in this case) in the house and to be considerate of things. My dilemma was how to make them realize the magnitude of this horrible crime while making sure they know how much more important they are to me than the picture. Than any earthly thing that can be given a price tag and hung on a wall. I know I bring this up too often, but seriously, I've faced my death. That picture really doesn't mean that much compared to those little hearts I broke when I scolded them for breaking mine.

Well, we got through it. John spent all afternoon drawing me a replacement picture. And that night he told me this: "When we were in our room, and we were crying, you know what Drew said? He said, 'Well, at least we know Mom loves us more than she loved that picture.'"

And believe me, that was way before I actually told them that.

I think they remember it from the last picture they broke.