AN ADAGE A DAY- ENCOURAGEMENT
I Lost My Marbles
By Carole Gilbert
My brother was five years older than me, but we were very close. I loved him so much and thought he hung the moon. I loved him so much so that I would do just about anything he asked. At least the first time or two. And living in the country in the 1960’s, we did a lot together. Sometimes, the things I let him talk me into got me into trouble, and him too. I even let him put grass snakes in my boots to scare our Momma when she took them off me. This was one of those things I only did twice! And sometimes we got mad at each other and argued. This always seemed to get us into more trouble.
Those times we got into trouble together Momma would send us to our rooms. Our bedroom doors were across the hallway from each other. One of my favorite things I remember doing with my brother happened when we got into trouble and had to stay in our rooms. We played marbles across the hall.
In this game, you thumb marbles toward each other. The object was to hit the marbles until they were all in one room or the other. Whoever ended up with all the marbles won. If any stayed in the hall, you had to hit them quickly so Momma wouldn’t see. That was part of the fun, keeping her from seeing what we were doing. If she saw us, we’d get into more trouble, and she’d take the marbles. It never failed, every time, either from my brother or Momma, “I lost my marbles.”
This idiom I lost my marbles or they’ve lost their marbles means that someone is acting unlike their normal self. They may be acting irrational, out of sorts, or maybe they're just acting in a crazy fun way. The phrase started in the 1800’s from the children’s game called Marbles. I thought about this idiom when my preacher gave an interesting example from Anne Ortlund’s book, Up With Worship, using a baggie of marbles and a baggie of grapes. You would think, as godly women, we should be like the marbles, firm and standing strong. Be touching each other, and mingling. But our mingling can be superficial, with no real interaction. We’re only scratching our surface. And you would think we should not be like the grapes tossed around in the baggie getting all leaky and messy, but this is to the contrary. We should be like grapes, seeping our insides together, meshing with each other in fellowship and encouragement. And it’s interesting that marble and grapes both have important roles in God’s Word.
Marble was used to stand for something strong like the pillars in Solomon’s temple. And grapes have a mixed but metaphorically major meaning. In Revelations they refer to judgment and in other places they refer to growth and being meshed with God Himself as Jesus states about the grapevine in John 15:5, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
I like this illustration. My brother and I were definitely grapes. We smashed up together all over the place. We had true fellowship seeping our lives into each other. And we meshed with God seeping our insides with Him. I can say I lost my marbles with my brother, my momma, and with God, figuratively and literally, and I’d do it all again.