Adult Assembly Required

One of the things I enjoy about my job is that every now and again I get to do things that have absolutely nothing to do with editing. Don't get me wrong, I love being an editor, but there are times when it's nice to do something different ... times when I get to do some physical labor and rest my eyes for a bit. Things like bringing the firewood up to the cubby behind the fireplace and stacking it piece by piece in a neat and orderly fashion (those of you who've been reading along with me for a while know I love doing anything related to the fireplace). Things like taking trash out to the dumpster behind our building. Things like moving boxes to find the extra carpet squares that were buried beneath them. Things like helping one of my co-workers change the florescent light bulb in her hanging desk light. Things like locating cleaning supplies or helping someone remove a stain from his shirt. Things like finding just where in the world that piece of paper is that is causing the paper jam in the copier. Things like all of those, and things like one I got to do today ... one today that ended up being way more than just a task to be completed.

Our company has grown by leaps and bounds since the beginning of the year; in fact, our Kansas City office has nearly doubled in size. Adding so many people has involved a lot of shuffling and moving around to make room for all of the new employees, and it's also meant adding new work stations and some additional furniture in order to adequately accommodate everyone's needs. One of those items of furniture arrived on Friday, and today when I had a lull in editing, I was able to work on putting together one of those new pieces of furniture. Now I need to tell you at this point that I definitely don't fit the stereotypical role of women like myself ... I pretty much suck at any kind of home repair, and assembling things has never been my strong suit. I've complained many a time about the difficulty of understanding assembly instructions ... I mean, come on ... seriously ... who writes those things anyway, and do they really try on purpose to make them impossible to understand? But today I was determined that I would win out over the instructions, and I did. I managed to follow the instructions and assemble a glider chair. Yep, I sure did ... put it together, tightened all the screws and bolts, and even sat in it and rocked back and forth to make sure that 1) it worked as it should, and 2) that it didn't collapse when someone sat in it. That would so not be good, you know, to build a chair that crumbled the minute someone sat in it.

Three words printed on the side of the box the chair was shipped in struck me the moment I saw them, pounded in my head as I worked to assemble the chair, and have been rolling around in my brain all evening ... "Adult Assembly Required." As I read the instructions and carefully placed the bolts and screws in the correct spots, I found myself wondering why the makers of the chair felt the need to emphasize that the chair should be assembled by an adult. I found myself wondering why a kid would be trying to put the chair together ... it seems to me it's a given that the assembly required for the chair to perform as it was designed to would only be undertaken by an adult. The more I wondered about those things, the more I began to think about us as humans ... how we're assembled ... Who put us together ... being designed and created for a purpose and according to God's plan.

The more I thought about being assembled, put together, designed and created, I suddenly remembered something a friend wrote to me in an email a few weeks ago ... something her kid told her about what she was learning during her week at a Christian-based sports camp. The little girl's biggest takeaway was that God has a plan for all of us, and He doesn't make mistakes. He knew He would create the little girl to be tall, have light brown hair and everything that she is. He knew he would create her best friend to be short ... He knew it. That's a lot of wisdom and insight coming from a little kid for sure, but it was when I read my friend's recounting of the following words from her daughter that tears sprung to my eyes and quickly made their way down my cheeks. 

"'And, Mom,' she said, 'He DOESN'T MAKE MISTAKES. He made us all exactly how we are supposed to be. So we need to be happy with who we are, because we are all part of God's plan.'"

You know what I think? I think maybe there was a reason I noticed those three words on the box of the chair today ... "Adult Assembly Required." I think God wanted me to recall the words of my friend's daughter ... to remember that He made me ... to know that He put me together ... to understand that He alone assembled me ... to accept that He has always had a plan far bigger than I can begin to comprehend ... to believe with all my heart that He doesn't ever make a mistake.

Adult assembly required? Maybe for the chair ... but not so for my heart ... not so for my spirit ... not so for my soul ... not so at all, friends ... not so at all.