OK, so when trials come along we should persevere — keep going despite the hardships. Is that what’s going on with this quote. I was thinking along those lines when I first read it but when I saw the context of the quote, I started to think along a different line:

The one enduring lesson of womanhood that Christian author, Mary Pierce, learned from her rag doll, Lulu

When I saw that, I thought about this poor doll getting whacked in the head and then getting it’s head sown back on by the child’s mother. I thought about what that doll might have been thinking.
“Maybe I’m not cut out to be a child’s doll, maybe I’m more of a shelf doll, maybe if my head gets whacked off I’m too delicate for such rough play. Maybe this child needs a sturdier doll made of steel or something.”
But of course the doll doesn’t get to decide. The doll gets its head sown back on and is ready to be beaten up again and if the head is knocked off, it will just be sown on again. Our life as Christians is like that, don’t you think, especially in our service to the Lord. We get our head gets whacked and yet we get back up and go back in the game. Why? Because we know that we have no choice, even when we decide to sit something out, it doesn’t work because we are right back in again (maybe doing something different but we are still be knocked around).
Sometimes I want to quit, just give up and sit on the shelf for awhile, be an observer while others do all the work. Sometimes I get so tired; I don’t think I can continue. But then something happens and I’m pulled back in again. This last semester is a perfect example. In the fall, when I saw the winter schedule I cried because I knew that I couldn’t continue teaching the Bible Study at my church — I had a scheduling conflict with one of the classes I had to take. I had put so much effort into writing that study over the summer and now I wouldn’t get to teach it, someone else would. After awhile I was feeling better about taking a break. The Lord was giving me a break, right? Ha! Has that ever been the case? I was given more work then I have ever been given before, a blog. Not just one blog but three. Not just three blogs but a whole blogroll with over 200 blogs and with all its own problems. Not only did I get whacked around by seminary but by the Internet as well.
You have a thousand pages to read this semister. Whack!
There are too many Christians on the blogroll. Whack!
Christians are stupid and believe wacky things (like writing about poop is a sin). Whack!
Writing about your struggles and told you have a problem with your heart.Whack!

Over and over again getting whacked by both my school and the Internet and every time I think that’s it, I’m done, I’m not tough enough to take the criticism, my head is sown back on and I’m back in the game again. Some may read this and think that I’m doing it to myself, I don’t have to have a blog, let alone three. I don’t need a blogroll. But I know that I’m not. Just like the doll I have no choice. I have to be in the game because I know this where the Lord would have me be.
Getting whacked but keep going because that’s what I’m called to do. And the whole time keeping in mind the word of God:

Colossians 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.