Behind the machine

True story!  I may have bitten off a bit more than I can chew.  My original thought is that I needed to practice diligence instead of procrastination.  I'm being diligent, but it is hard.  Really, really hard.  So as I sew along on the many Christmas projects I have decided HAVE to be done by Christmas for gifts, it came to me that marriage is pretty much like making a quilt.  

First of all, you start out all fresh and new, just like brand new fabric, fresh off the bolt, not yet unfolded from the time you bought it.  When you begin to grow and mature, you get rearranged into patterns.  You know, personality traits, life experiences; those types of things.  And then you are all put together.  You have life by the tail.  You are young, busy, working your way up the ladder.  Soon, though, you get married.  And you add layers to your life.  You add someone's history and your history and you stitch them together with the life experiences you share as a married couple.

As I quilt on my machine, I like to pray for whomever gets to enjoy this quilt.  Today as I traced the lines and stitched the quilt together, I thought of my own married life.  When you first load a quilt on the machine, you have to stitch along the sides.  I thought of that as the line that is drawn when we married.  A fresh new start.  Brand new quilting stitches.  When I move on to stitch the pattern, it is shaky at first.  It usually is, until I warm up.  Then I get to going along pretty good.  Sometimes I'm really good at following the line, and sometimes I stray off.  How often I stray off God's path in my own life, not to mention straying off on my own in my marriage.  I'm really glad that God is forgiving and gentle to guide me back to where I need to be.  

There are many twists and turns . . . sometimes we get lost.  I got lost twice on this quilt.  Sheesh, that means I have to back up, stitching all the way.  I like to leave those in the quilt, though.  No one's perfect, after all.  And I'm off again, stitching merrily away until there's a POP.  Suddenly, not everything is working well.  The thread broke.  Ugh.  All quilting comes to a standstill until things get back on track.  Yeah, been there done that in my marriage.  We have an issue.  There is some intense fellowship (that's a new phrase I heard recently and it's my new favorite!!), we take a rest, refill, have more conversation, a lot less intense this time, get back on the same page and carry on with life.  On the quilt, I will take out the empty bobbin, fill it up and put it back in the machine.  Then I will take a couple of stitches out, fix the thread and start sewing again.  At the end of the row, it's like the end of a season.  Sometimes I just get to go back and repeat the pattern without moving the quilt (rolling it up).  But most of the time, I have to move the quilt.  Everything stops.  The machine gets moved out of the way and I focus totally on moving the quilt, lining everything up and securing it to work on the next row.  In life, at the end of a row, there's usually a new season where I have to grow, stretch, relax, line back up and secure my heart to work on what I have learned.

In a quilt there are many seams, lots of threads, lots of different shapes, sizes and combinations.  In a marriage there are many choices held together by lots of experiences of all kinds.  Both are held together by prayer, love, patience, thoughtfulness and care.

And that's my view from the needle today . . .