Almost Happy Birthday
Tapestry (3/14/06)
Try to focus, even for just a moment on the face of every person you've ever met. There have been so many. Some you will never be able to recall...and others are all too familiar to you. Now imagine each of those people as a thread. Some vibrant colors, others muted. Some black. Each one being woven together on the loom of your life. In and out of each other...sometimes only a single color runs through....sometimes they work together to form a beautiful design. Sometimes the threads get tangled and form a big knot. This is your tapestry. A tapestry that is very personally yours....no two will ever be the same...just like snowflakes.
I spent all morning getting caught up on this season of "The L Word". And I just finished the episode where Dana, one of the main characters, had found out she had breast cancer and it was far worse than they originally thought after performing a mastectomy. So sad. So scary. But the part that got me was that even though in the beginning she had lied to the people in her life to protect them by minimizing what was wrong with her, after they found out what was really going on, it was like the emergency "phone tree" was activated. When she woke up from surgery all of the people in her life....past and present....were there. They didn't want her to go one moment without support....not one moment without knowing that she was loved. As a matter of fact, those were the words spoken to her when she first opened her eyes and her dear, dear friend Bette leaned in, smiled and said "I love you. Do you know that I love you?" Oh the power of that.
As Dana...still groggy-eyed from anesthesia....slowly looked around the room, her eyes rested on each and every face for just a moment. Some were new loves, some were old. Some had been tangled messes of relationships. But one thing was evident.....every face had played a part in the weaving of her tapestry.
My tapestry....what does it look like?
I can remember when I was in third or fourth grade teaching myself how to knit. My grandma had taught me how to crochet...but I wanted bigger and better things. I started to knit an afghan and I was so frustrated because whenever I would start it would be an utter mess. I didn't know how to keep a consistent tension on the yarn so all of the stitches would be different sizes. I would miss stitches and accidentally do some of them twice. I finally decided after restarting sooooo many times that I would just let this one be my "practice" one. I wouldn't restart anymore...I would just keep on going. I didn't have enough of the first thread to make it very far so I ended up having to continue with some different colors...whatever scraps my mom had to give me....and I just kept plugging along. At first I continued to have the same problems that I had all the other times, but then something happened. As I would step back and look at what I was creating I noticed that it was becoming smoother. The stitches were all starting to look the way they were supposed to look. It was looking like a real afghan! I was doing it! Yes, the first foot or so of it was an utter mess, and the colors were all screwed up....but as I went along it was getting better and better because I was learning what I was supposed to do...and I was learning which yarn would go nicely with the other yarn.
I bet that's how my tapestry looks. The beginning is probably a real mess...full of hand-me-down yarns that don't match from experiences in my young life that I had no control over. Then once I got to start buying my own "yarn"...I still didn't know what I was doing. I made mistake after mistake. Chose the wrong colors and made poor choices. But as I go along....wow....I'm actually starting to get better at this. I'm making better choices. Better decisions. I'm also choosing "threads" that are more similar and blend together better and they are all coming together to make a breathtaking design in the fabric of my life. I'm even lucky enough to have a beautiful golden thread consistently weaving throughout every row.....the name of that thread is Jesus. That was an expensive thread....it came from royalty....but I didn't have to buy it. It was a gift to me. You see the king is enthralled with my beauty...that's what the Bible says. And so even with all of the inconsistencies you can see at times if you look close enough...it's still mine...and it's beautiful. I accept each and every person who has been in my life and their designated place in my design.
Try to focus, even for just a moment on the face of every person you've ever met. There have been so many. Some you will never be able to recall...and others are all too familiar to you. Now imagine each of those people as a thread. Some vibrant colors, others muted. Some black. Each one being woven together on the loom of your life. In and out of each other...sometimes only a single color runs through....sometimes they work together to form a beautiful design. Sometimes the threads get tangled and form a big knot. This is your tapestry. A tapestry that is very personally yours....no two will ever be the same...just like snowflakes.
I spent all morning getting caught up on this season of "The L Word". And I just finished the episode where Dana, one of the main characters, had found out she had breast cancer and it was far worse than they originally thought after performing a mastectomy. So sad. So scary. But the part that got me was that even though in the beginning she had lied to the people in her life to protect them by minimizing what was wrong with her, after they found out what was really going on, it was like the emergency "phone tree" was activated. When she woke up from surgery all of the people in her life....past and present....were there. They didn't want her to go one moment without support....not one moment without knowing that she was loved. As a matter of fact, those were the words spoken to her when she first opened her eyes and her dear, dear friend Bette leaned in, smiled and said "I love you. Do you know that I love you?" Oh the power of that.
As Dana...still groggy-eyed from anesthesia....slowly looked around the room, her eyes rested on each and every face for just a moment. Some were new loves, some were old. Some had been tangled messes of relationships. But one thing was evident.....every face had played a part in the weaving of her tapestry.
My tapestry....what does it look like?
I can remember when I was in third or fourth grade teaching myself how to knit. My grandma had taught me how to crochet...but I wanted bigger and better things. I started to knit an afghan and I was so frustrated because whenever I would start it would be an utter mess. I didn't know how to keep a consistent tension on the yarn so all of the stitches would be different sizes. I would miss stitches and accidentally do some of them twice. I finally decided after restarting sooooo many times that I would just let this one be my "practice" one. I wouldn't restart anymore...I would just keep on going. I didn't have enough of the first thread to make it very far so I ended up having to continue with some different colors...whatever scraps my mom had to give me....and I just kept plugging along. At first I continued to have the same problems that I had all the other times, but then something happened. As I would step back and look at what I was creating I noticed that it was becoming smoother. The stitches were all starting to look the way they were supposed to look. It was looking like a real afghan! I was doing it! Yes, the first foot or so of it was an utter mess, and the colors were all screwed up....but as I went along it was getting better and better because I was learning what I was supposed to do...and I was learning which yarn would go nicely with the other yarn.
I bet that's how my tapestry looks. The beginning is probably a real mess...full of hand-me-down yarns that don't match from experiences in my young life that I had no control over. Then once I got to start buying my own "yarn"...I still didn't know what I was doing. I made mistake after mistake. Chose the wrong colors and made poor choices. But as I go along....wow....I'm actually starting to get better at this. I'm making better choices. Better decisions. I'm also choosing "threads" that are more similar and blend together better and they are all coming together to make a breathtaking design in the fabric of my life. I'm even lucky enough to have a beautiful golden thread consistently weaving throughout every row.....the name of that thread is Jesus. That was an expensive thread....it came from royalty....but I didn't have to buy it. It was a gift to me. You see the king is enthralled with my beauty...that's what the Bible says. And so even with all of the inconsistencies you can see at times if you look close enough...it's still mine...and it's beautiful. I accept each and every person who has been in my life and their designated place in my design.
~Let God be the consistent thread in an inconsistent life~
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