Painting tiny houses

When what you're doing doesn't make sense

Then.

It was one of those brilliantly clear summer days in northern California, the hot sun beating down on the parking lot from a cloudless sky. A puff of cool air scented with potpourri greeted us as the automatic doors of the craft store opened. Matt and I weren’t really sure what we were looking for, but when we saw the little white ceramic houses on the shelf, with globs of snow on the roofs and tiny wreaths hanging on the doors, we put them into the basket I carried along with some acrylic paints and made our way to the cash registers to pay for them. 

We spent our dates for the next few weeks painting the miniature houses, using finest-tipped brushes for the trim and tiny wreaths, and even bought a special “snow paint” to add a realistic touch when we had finished the first houses. With the money from our summer jobs (me baby-sitting, him working part-time for a private investigator) , we bought a couple more. Over several months, we added a church, library, drug store, gas station, diner, craft store, and book store. It was the perfect little hobby for us, giving us lots of time to talk and get to know each other. 

We didn’t think about all the things that would go wrong, like who would get the village if we broke up. Or what if, some day, we were actually married and had kids, and one of those kids knocked a house to the ground and broke it? Instead, we turned on the radio and talked about our crazy ideas and dreams. Our paintbrushes swiped colors over the walls, and we argued about what shade the trim should be. Somehow we crafted a tiny town not unlike Bedford Falls from It’s a Wonderful Life, a place that captivated our imaginations and dreams of home. Over time, we placed each finished building next to another and smiled at each other in satisfaction.

Now.

“Mom! Dad said we can set up Christmas Village today! Can you get the box out? PLEEEEASE??!” Annalee is tugging at my hand, pulling me toward the closet under the stairs where we keep our Christmas decorations. 

“Okay, but wait,” I tell her, “where are we going to set it up?” 

“I’ve got it, honey,” Matt calls from the other room. There’s a low box covered with a white tablecloth. Its proximity to the ground indicates that the small, destructive people who once populated the streets of our little town with Littlest Pet Shop animals, tiny plastic dinosaurs, or Hotwheel cars are growing up and no longer pose a threat to its survival. We set up the houses carefully as our youngest kids dance around us in delight. Lilly comes out of her bedroom and clasps her hands over heart. “Christmas Village!” she exclaims. “It always feels so cozy and fun when Christmas Village is set up!” Once it’s set up, we stand back and choose our houses. Matt likes the Tudor, and most of the kids want the old Victorians while I still prefer the comfy, unpretentious Craftsman, the first one I painted so long ago. 

As our kids lean over the tiny village, Matt and I stand back, arms linked behind the other’s back. We look at each other with tiny smiles, and I know we’re both thinking how we couldn’t have imagined our lives looking like this all those years ago. Our wildest dreams weren’t–couldn’t have been–big enough to come up with the ten tiny hands that would reach for those houses over the years as we admonished, “Careful!” In fact, had we thought about the perils a growing family would pose to our project, we might have decided to spend our time and extremely limited funds another way. But when I see their delight in it every year, when I hear them beg to put up Christmas Village even before the tree, I’m glad we didn’t talk ourselves out of it.

I think a lot about the things Matt and I are doing these days. This year, between August 29th and November 9th, I wrote a 73,000-word manuscript. Now, as I let my words “breathe” a little before going back into a round of heavy editing and rewrites, I’m learning lots about the publishing process and wondering if all those words will ever become an actual book. The impossibility feels daunting, but at the same time, the drive that pushed me to write an insane amount over two months insists that I can’t quit now.

I study French every single day even though it doesn’t make a lick of sense, especially given that I live in Korea. Sure, it made communication easy on our recent trip to France, but I’ll never forget someone who once made a face and said to me, “French?! Why would you study that?! When are you ever going to use it?” Besides for the rare vacation here or the ability to understand a French movie without the subtitles on… I really can’t say. And at the same time, I can’t give it up. In high school and college, I took classes, and now I’ve used Duolingo for almost four years.

There’s the house we bought two years ago, the one we felt divinely led to, that we loved but moved away from because we felt like we had to. But we still own it and still dream about going back someday. How? When? Can we?

More than any other time in my life I think, the past couple of years have made me question if and how what I’m doing makes sense. Time and again, I’ve felt like Noah, building an ark in an arid land. I don’t know if I’ve ever questioned more the path I’m on, or wished harder that I could see further than just the step I’m on.

But when I look at Christmas Village, I think maybe it’s okay for us not to know all the answers when we’re doing something. Maybe it’s fine to do something just for the enjoyment of doing it and see where it leads. “Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see,” states Hebrews 11:1. While that mostly refers to something much bigger than my artistic whims and daydreams about homes and adventures, I believe it holds true for these as well. When I see the smiles on the faces of my kids this frigid Christmas about a silly little project that started on a hot summer’s day ages ago, I can’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, however unexpected it ends up, this could be even better than we imagine.

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Then and Now".