An Unexpected Calling: Ugg Lee Dolls

{ In preparation for our Faith Over Fear #justdoitafraid Workshop, we are featuring people who have stepped out even through they were afraid, and God did something AMAZING! So, it’s with so much joy I get to introduce my long-time friend! Lindy and I met online through school. Her genuineness is contagious and you’ll fall in love with her, her story and those silly little Ugg Lee Dolls!}

On New Year’s Day 2013 it was cold, dreary, and sleeting.

I normally liked to spend my free time drawing or painting, but that day I got out the sewing machine instead.  I’ve always hated to sew, but for some reason I was drawn to making an odd little “doll.”  I’m no seamstress, so he was quite pitiful looking.  As I stuffed him, seams would rip and I would have to mend him.  When he was finished, I thought he was so funny that I had to post a picture to Facebook and ask what I should call him.  Many names were suggested, but the one that immediately spoke to me was Ugg Lee.  To my surprise, several people fell in love with him and wanted one of their own.

I was stunned.

I gladly made dolls for friends and acquaintances on Facebook.  I would tweak my design here and there and learned as I went along.  I started the Ugg Lee Dolls business page and began to post photos of each new doll.  A local gift shop owner contacted me and asked to carry them in her shop.   This literally brought me to tears.  I felt as if a dream I never knew I had was finally coming true.

I thanked God every day.

I am not a salesperson.  I’m a behind-the-scenes person.  The Ugg Lees have taken me out of my comfort zone so many times in the past year.  I saw on Facebook that a new gift shop was opening locally, and I had met the owner once before.  As scared as I was to do it, I contacted her to see if she would meet with me.  To my surprise, she immediately said yes.  I worked one day a week in her shop so that she would let me sell my dolls there.   Stepping out opened so many doors for me.  But it also put me “out there” with people….where I hadn’t been in years.

God equipped me to do what needed to be done to promote my little business, even though at times I was scared to death.

God has done so many amazing things through these little dolls.  I love to stand back and actually see the expression on people’s faces when they see them for the first time. I love how customers come back wanting more because they bring them so much joy.  I’ve had customers buy them for loved ones to take with them to chemo treatments.  It is such an honor to me to be involved in any small way in making life a little bit better for someone.

God gets all the glory.  He brings them to me.  I just make the dolls.

Recently my niece asked if I would make one of my antique quilt dolls for her dear friend who was going through a rough time, health wise.   I made the doll out of my mother-in-law’s old, ragged quilt, and as I stuffed the doll, I wrote a tiny prayer of healing, rolled it up tightly and added it to the stuffing.  When I mailed it, I told my niece what I had done.  When her friend received the doll, she called my niece immediately.  She was moved to tears.  My niece then told her about the prayer inside.  She immediately began to feel around in the doll.  She found it settled in the right leg.

Without my knowledge nor my niece’s knowledge, it turns out this was the leg that was affected from a surgery gone wrong.

That can only be God.

It humbles and blesses me for God to use me in any small way.

People tell me my business brings joy to a world that is in desperate need of it.  I let God know every day that I’m thankful and blessed beyond measure that he chose me, of all people, to do this.  If it all ends tomorrow, this has been a wonderful adventure.

It’s completely up to Him.