Lofty Is NOT Real

Once, in a former life, I went to puppet school. I had a two year old who glued pictures to the wall, emptied tissue boxes and toothpaste tubes, and dipped cats in the toilet. I also had a brand new baby girl who cried 23 1/2 hours a day. I went to puppet school to get out of the house. I took a friend with me. She had just lost her oldest child, her only son, in a car accident. I went to puppet school to get her out of the house as well. We signed up for a special two-for-one deal, which meant we both got to go to class, but we only got to make one puppet. (As a bonus, we discovered together the joy of a hot glue gun and bought one to share.) We made Esther Sue. She had pink hair tied in ponytails and said outrageous things to the STP that were unacceptable for the Pastor's wife to say. My friend ended up with the hot glue gun and Esther Sue ended up with us. My children do not remember life without puppets.
They've watched the puppets, performed with the puppets, know how to make a puppet enter and exit a stage, and how to make a puppet's mouth move. (Because ...you..don't..talk.. like.. this.) They have taken the puppets to Vacation Bible School, church camp meetings, family reunions, and missions trips. They were there when a skunk infiltrated the puppet suitcase.
I still have a box of puppets in the attic. Esther Sue is not in the box. (Hopefully, there are no critters in the box either.) I think she just got worn out along the way and replaced by new and improved puppets.
I have followed a couple of bloggers for several years. Don't know them personally. Just like their writing style, their content, and okay, I basically cyber-stalked their lives. One built a new house in the country and got a part time job at a garden center. Her mother had puppets. The other one had six kids and wrote about times they emptied the toothpaste tube and dipped things in the toilet. She eventually got a book deal. In the past month the first one became an athetist and the second one got a divorce. Their lives no longer hold the same appeal for me that they once did. But they made me think.
And so I want to say to all of my children, for the record, that the puppets are NOT real. But God is. And for all the stupid parenting things I did, and for all the tooth fairy notes you received, and all the coleslaw in your lives, and the unsupervised camping and boating trips you went on, I am sorry. (For those of you who are already out of the house it may be too late to second guess my parenting skills. Pity the Goob with new and improved parents.) But, hopefully along the way, you learned how to think for yourselves and have your own relationship with God and love the people around you. And hopefully you won't get to be 40 years old and act like you have fluff in your heads. Because I didn't mean to raise puppets.