TITLE: The Quilt By Loretta Kibby 10/17/07 |
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4-26-2006
Making sense out of what doesn’t make sense, is that even possible? As I sit looking at the pieces of my life, they look like quilting pieces, a kind of puzzle all jumbled together and scattered across the floor of my life. Lying there waiting for me to put them together, connected correctly, attached right, so there are no gaping holes or sloppy stitches that can come easily undone. As I sit staring at the lot of them, their diverse colors and different shapes, it looks pretty hopeless. There is a piece here, a piece there, some are right side up and others are upside down. It looks like a big wind just blew through here. This is made more complicated by the fact that I don’t like to sew, much less quilt. Prior experience gave me a back ache for quite some time. It is not my favorite sport. I don’t know where to start and everywhere there are dark pieces that seem to stand out in plain sight; my heart is just not in it.
We all know that it takes many bits of color to make a picture. It takes many objects around us to give us a background to stand out in. What would my backyard look like without the trees to make the sunset lights dance thorough another piece of my picture; my window? It all flows together, each piece needing the rest to complete the picture, even me. The sunset without the trees to create patterns of differing lights, to come through the deck windows, to make me admire the reflective beauty of God’s creation and my window itself with its clarity. All the pieces for that picture correctly fit together. God put it together.
The quilt is like that, it is just not put together any which way. It seems far more complicated than the sunset because my knowledge is so limited. My heart is not into the piecing because I can’t see the beauty of the pieces with my heart. I can’t envision how the pieces will fit to make something beautiful with my heart just yet. Maybe I will enjoy it later but not now.
So my pieces are the things that are going on in my life, repetitious, like the pieces for the quilt, time consuming to figure out. My quilt has pieces of joy like my grandson and sorrow like my children’s diagnosis of mental illness, some have deep colors like my marriage and some seem dull and lifeless like I feel at times, some are dark like sadness and grief. They blend together like the sunset and the trees in my backyard creating another picture page in my book of life, like an artistry of my life not by my design in some ways. God has provided the pieces for the quilt.
Today my pieces lie scattered; I am overwhelmed by the mental health piece, crushed by the sadness of it again. It seems as relentless as the tide as it ebbs and flows but doesn’t go away. What does one do with that except pick up the pieces and make something with it that will have value and meaning and turn it into something that will be warm and comforting. A memory book of successes of things that could have destroyed but when pieced together carefully through frustration and tears comes something useful, beautiful and a reminder of God’s goodness, my unwillingness to embrace the hard pieces, my fears, my sadness, my grief, my memories of joy and frustration and all of the external things that are to directly related but still effect me are part of the border of the quilt.
Inside the quilt the batting is God’s promises, His words, His calling to remembrance of how He holds me in my place and time while He comforts me with the warmth of who He is. The backing is like the Holy Spirit who touches me with the softness of the love of God.
When the pieces of my pain begin to fit together maybe I will see all that God means for me to see. I will be whole but for today, I cry as I work out the individual pieces of my complicated beautiful quilt. The tears of sadness mingled with the joy of knowing that beauty comes from such things as this.
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