Home for Christmas

“I’m a little doll who was dropped and broken, from my mommy’s knees,
I’m a little doll who has just been mended, won’t you tell me, please?
Are my ears on straight, is my nose in place, have I got a cute expression on my face?
Are my blue eyes bright, do I look alright, to be taken home Christmas day?” sang the little girl.

She was reenacting her part in a children’s dance program for us that Howard and I had missed that evening. Usually quiet and reserved, the six-year-old, cheeks still rouged and hair still curled from the performance, became animated and expressive as she danced, pantomimed and portrayed a doll, pointing out eyes, nose and smile, slapping her knees for emphasis, clapping and throwing up her hands in a question at the end. I was amazed at her charm and grace!

Even more amazing, I realized, as the words of this children’s song came back to me in the night, was that she was a flesh-and-blood example of the song, living out the story of the doll! Tears of realization and gratitude welled up in my eyes as I got the picture.

Just over a year ago this child was “dropped and broken” when tragedy struck her family and she and her little sister were tossed about between makeshift caretakers. Even before she lost her parents, when hardly more than a baby herself, she tended her little sister, mothering her and changing her diapers. When they were rescued, the lice-infested children told horror stories of being locked in a closet by an uncaring adult.

But for almost a year now, they had been in the process of mending in a stable, if crowded, Christian home by a compassionate couple who could no longer look after them and care for their own children, too. My son’s family wants to adopt them and are going through the preliminary processes.

The little dancer, still fragile and a little uncertain, wonders if she is pretty. Her foster sister is pretty, and her little sister is cute, but somewhere along the line she has picked up a negative impression about herself. When asked recently if she could have anything she wanted, her response was, “I want to be pretty.”

As it turns out, those sad brown eyes--not blue--are bright and happier now, and they will be even brighter next Sunday morning, when they awake to their first Christmas with what will surely be their “forever” family—ours!