Remember my husband’s question? What’s the worst thing that could happen?
After pulling out the basket from the dollhouse wall, I considered my quota of risky things filled for a while. But the Spirit isn’t finished until He’s finished.
One night, the dark pushed through the art room windows, but we turned on every light and settled ourselves to work. I studied Lynnie. Changes needed to be made for Lynnie to fit the treehouse villa being prepared for her.
I loved her face and didn’t want to change its sweetness, but her body reminded me of a hobbit, which is fine if I had designed her to be a hobbit.
I took her crooked foot, and I pulled it off the wire. There I sat with her left foot in my hand, wondering what I had just done. My husband’s words rolled through my head. What is the worst that can happen? I wasn’t sure I wanted to answer that question.
Instead, I pulled her other foot off, but I didn’t stop there. In an I’m-on-a-mission-now focus I tore apart my twenty-three-year-old doll’s cobbled-together armature.
Now, I might as well tell it like it is or was. I had no idea how to create a doll armature when I started this journey (apparently not a clear concept of human anatomy either), and what I found under her dress just established that truth. Her legs were attached to a U-shaped wire and glued where her vagina should have been. No wonder the poor woman couldn’t sit down properly. And when I removed her dress, the stuffing of her boobs just tumbled right out on the table. She had no waistline and no hips; the wooden block torso caused her to be all sharp edges and angles. The wire attached to her arms wrapped around her dowel-rod neck like a winter scarf, held tight with yellowed hot glue.
Lynnie lay on the table disassembled, and I wondered if I could put her back together again.
I drilled holes for regular hip sockets. I moved the arm wires down to create shoulders and uncover the neck. I whittled a waist and hips into the wooden block torso. I glued wooden beads to the block to give her a bust. Using tweezers, I pulled old glue from her neck. Then, I padded her curvy with strips of quilt batting and then wrapped the new armature with soft
ivory-colored yarn. I worked long and late.
Lynnie had a new body. I beheld her, and I was pleased. Delighted, actually. I stood up from my chair to call it a night, but—
The wind of the Spirit blew again, whispering an invitation for transformation to me. Before I hear the Word, I see the picture.
God told Jeremiah to go and watch the potter working with the clay, and the vessel was spoiled—misshapen. But the potter reworked it into another vessel as he thought it should be. The Spirit spoke gently to me, “Tamera, can God not do with you as you have done with Lynnie? Can he not rework you according to His purposes, as He thinks you should be?” Just as you transformed Lynnie, doesn’t Creator God have unlimited power to make you new?
I sat back down in my chair.
The New Testament writers frequently use two words—neos and kainos. Neos is a word used to convey that something or someone is new in time, but kainos means new in quality, something made fresh.
Just as I took my clay creation and made her fresh and increased her quality, so does God make all things kainos.
When God begins a good work, He brings it to completion. Let Him do His work in us, rework the clay of us, transforming us into something wonderfully kainos.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new (kainos) creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new (kainos) has come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV
