How We Can Be Remade at Christmas

I’m building my seven-year-old daughter a dollhouse for Christmas. I’m quite sure it won’t be finished in time for Christmas morning, but it will have walls and floors and wallpaper and a porch and a roof, at least. The shingles will still probably be missing, and the windows as well, but hopefully I will manage to paint and install a lemonade-yellow front door.

It was a big project to take on. I should have begun in August. But I didn’t know she wanted a dollhouse–or that I had an unmet desire to build one–until one day in November when we were in Hobby Lobby, and we saw the kits. They had samples, of course, assembled and painted and detailed out, all perched on a high shelf where you couldn’t touch them. There was a big farmhouse with a wraparound porch, a stately Victorian with a tower and gingerbread trim, a trim saltbox, and this little Craftsman-era cottage. The “Beachside Bungalow,” it was called. I fell instantly in love, and while I thought my daughter would want one of the bigger houses, she too was drawn to the little bungalow. It was kismet. Meant to be. She fingered all the miniature accessories, cooing over china dishes, tiny cakes, and itty bitty books.

I went back a few days later with a coupon for 40 percent off one item. I bought paint, sandpaper, masking tape, and glue. I was nervous. Could I really do it? Make a dollhouse that looked like a proper dollhouse? I decided not to buy any furniture yet–that felt like getting ahead of myself–but I couldn’t resist a tiny welcome mat and a framed picture. Goals, right?

Thanksgiving weekend came and went, visiting family returned home, and I was finally able to set up a work table in our guest room. As I opened the box, I felt overwhelmed. All the pieces! All the shingles (over 900 of them)! All the pages of instructions! And then I felt a surge of determination. I was going to do this.

When I was a little girl–maybe four or five–my dad built me a dollhouse. It was almost exactly like the farmhouse I’d just seen at Hobby Lobby, except that mine didn’t have a wraparound porch. I remember it as the best gift I ever received as a child, and not just because it captured my imagination, but because my dad had built it for me with his own two hands. My parents were divorced, and the dollhouse stayed at my dad’s, which meant I only got to play with every other weekend. Family members bought furniture to add to it, guessing at what it needed. It eventually had a fully kitted-out bathroom and a baby grand piano, but no bedroom furniture. Sadly, the dollhouse was never quite finished. It remained doorless and windowless its entire life. Things were busy. Babies were born. It went to live in the basement.

Then, one weekend, I arrived at my dad’s to find the dollhouse gone. I learned that my rambunctious little brothers had damaged it, and it had been thrown away. I remember choking back intense emotions, determined not to let anyone see how grieved I was. Had it been up to me, I would never have thrown away the dollhouse, no matter how damaged. But the choice had already been made. There was nothing I could do.

My dad spent Thanksgiving with us this year, and he arrived with two artfully crafted toy chests for my daughters. He still loves to build things with his hands. I showed him the dollhouse kit I hadn’t yet opened. I asked him for his advice on a few of the instructions. Then I said, without intending to, “I wish I had the dollhouse you made me so I could pass it down to my girls.”

“Let’s not talk about that,” my dad said, and I knew then that the old wound wasn’t just mine–it was his as well.

There is something about making things that fills a need in most of us. I believe it’s because we are wired to be makers, having been created ourselves by the Great Maker. My own need to make, to create, is fulfilled in a number of ways. I write, I knit, I sew, I cook. I am a maker. And I am a remaker. I edit. I frog rows of yarn and knit again. I follow a recipe and adjust ingredients to suit my own taste and the taste of my family. In my making and remaking, I am living out my own created-ness at the deepest level.

I’ve been back in Hobby Lobby more times this month than I have in the past five years, probably. With every trip for more necessary supplies like paint,  furniture and accessories, then miniature lights and a tiny Christmas tree also made their way into my cart. My confidence has grown as I’ve painted and sanded, raised walls, and weighted down floors. I opened the box and began the work, and the house is taking shape.

It occurred to me last night, as I was smoothing out a bubble under a piece of dollhouse wallpaper with the tip of my finger, that Christmas is the perfect time to be working on this project. Theologians sometimes refer to Christ as the “Second Adam,” and I understand why. Through Jesus, God redeemed–remade–a lost and broken world. He gave us the opportunity to be healed, to be made whole again. It was the best gift, the ultimate gift from our Creator.

I didn’t realize it when I decided to embark on the making of the dollhouse, but what I am really doing is remaking something that was broken and lost in my own life, on the smallest of human scales. Even though this little blue bungalow isn’t for me, and my daughter won’t know the story of my own dollhouse until she’s older because she doesn’t need to, this making–this remaking–has offered healing I didn’t know I still needed until the opportunity arrived. And even if it isn’t finished in time for Christmas morning, I’m determined to keep working on it until the last shingle is laid, the last curtain hung, every room furnished. Perhaps my daughter will want to join me in the rest of the making. Already, at seven, she is a maker, too.

And just like that, let’s come back to Jesus. Next week, we celebrate his birth, the coming of the long-looked-for Savior, the Redeemer of the world entire.

Are you ready to be remade? All the pieces are there. You just need to let Jesus open the box and begin.

Harmony Harkema has loved the written word for as long as she can remember. A former English teacher turned editor, she has spent the past eleven years in the publishing industry. A writer herself in the fringe hours of her working-and-homeschooling mom life, Harmony also has a heart for leading and coaching aspiring writers. Harmony lives in Memphis with her husband and two small daughters. She blogs at harmonyharkema.com.

Photograph © Raphael Jeanneret, used with permission