On Visible Mending and the Handiwork of God

A skirt I made from a vintage tablecloth
caught on something while my daughter wore it,
and a big, 90 degree tear resulted.
I thought about letting the work of my hands go, but it bothered me.
The tablecloth had been stained, and had holes in it when I found it.
I had carefully cut around some of the leaves in the border,
and applique-patched them over the holes.
I dyed the skirt a soft gray, which hid the stains.
I liked how I had taken an object that could not be used as it was created,
and repaired and restored and remade it
into what I thought was a lovely garment.
Now it was torn, and the tear was not able to be hidden.
I have heard my whole life that if a seam tears, you can repair it.
But this wasn't a seam.
It was ruined.

I set it aside for weeks, not willing to toss it,
but not knowing exactly how to fix it.
The cloth I made it from was long gone.
There was nothing to patch it with.

One day, looking for an embroidery project for a friend,
I came across visible mending on Pinterest.
Oh, my!
People were doing this on purpose, and loving the mended project
even more than something new and pristine.

I pulled the skirt back out, and sat down to make it useful again.
Instead of trying to hide my repair,
and pretend the damage had never been done,
I used embroidery floss with its subtle shine,
and stitched far more stitches than were necessary for usefulness,
enjoying every one.
That particular rip would not likely rip again.
When I finished, somehow I loved this handiwork
even more than I had loved it before.

I looked the skirt over, and found a couple of worn places
and a small hole I'd not noticed before.
I added a spiral of stitches over a worn place.
An embroidered rose to fill a small hole.
I'm too invested in this fabric now to toss it lightly aside.
I'd rather repair it.
Restore it.
Redeem it.

The useful has become a work of creativity and art.
A poetry of stitches instead of an exercise book sentence.
A painted portrait instead of a police sketch.
This shows the soul of the image -- not just its hair color and mouth shape.

This morning I was reading Nehemiah 9:17:
"[They] refused to obey, 
neither were mindful of Thy wonders that Thou didst among them; 
but hardened their necks, 
and in their rebellion appointed a captain to return to their bondage: 
but Thou art a God ready to pardon, 
gracious and merciful, 
slow to anger, 
and of great kindness, 
and forsookest them not."

I looked up several words, but it was that last phrase that arrested me.
He forsookest them not.
He didn't leave them.
He didn't depart from them.
He didn't leave them behind, let them alone, abandon them or neglect them.
He didn't let them loose, set them free, or let them go.
They were not deserted.
All those things come under the first meaning of the word.
There was a second meaning.
To restore, repair.

"For we are His workmanship, 
created in Christ Jesus for good works, 
which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them."
(Ephesians 2:10) 

Oh Lord -- I am so full of torn places --
stains and holes. 
My flaws are all in the body of the fabric, not the seams.
Don't let me go.
Repair and restore me. 

But He does more.
He makes beautiful things -- stitches art into our mending.
We are His workmanship, the Scripture says.
Poema.
His creativity repairs us uniquely.
In places, His handiwork becomes far more visible
than the original fabric was,
His stitches the only thing holding any of it together.
Where we are stitched will not match anyone else's repairs.
Unique to our flaws, His creativity, and the material at hand,
each one becomes a newly-made creative expression in His overall masterpiece.
We are all worked into the whole.
Maybe you've thought of yourself as the worst patch.
But He repairs, remakes, restores --
and places you into the whole
as a trophy of His love and creativity.

Make Her Beautiful

We listen to a song often that was done by Hillary and Kate.

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

You make me new, You are making me new
You make me new, You are making me new

It's such a lovely song, with such a simple truth.
And I think of the scripture that tells husbands
to love their wives as Christ loved the church:
how He gave Himself for her,
sanctifies her, 
and washes her with the water of the Word.
The church does not come perfect to the Savior's arms.

Sometimes I read Christian marriage advice and it's so cardboard.
I get especially annoyed by the advice to wives
that tells them how to be perfect.
To get perfect hair and exercise more and wear lipstick.

I'm a tomboy at heart, and not a trophy.
And I have never wanted to be a glossy beauty.
I wanted to be loved.
I wanted to be wanted.
But not wanted because I looked like someone else's idol.

When I met my husband, I was going out of my way to not be glossy.
Imagine this beauty, (which was a regular ensemble):
overall shorts and a t-shirt,
a braid pulled through a baseball cap pulled down low,
and thick socks with work boots.
I had some assets I could play up,
but I wasn't exactly in the frame of mind to catch anyone.
In fact, I was tired of being noticed physically.
It felt more like an insult than a compliment to be thought pretty. 

The first time I met him, I wasn't quite so off-putting in my dress
as described above.
I was wearing a hippy skirt with the work boots.
I guess in a small way, the skirt said 'feminine'.
We were praying in a group for a mutual friend
who was suffering from LSD flashbacks.
He openly stared at me through the prayer.
He didn't look away when I looked at him.

One day, a couple of weeks later,
I got off duty in the kitchen
when everyone else had eaten their dinner already,
and he sat down with me while I ate my dinner.
He asked me what I was going to do that evening.
"I thought I'd go up to the cafe and read poetry," I said. "What are you doing?"
"I thought I'd go up to the cafe and read poetry," he answered.
It was just plain -- I'm going to hang around you and be with you.
No pretending to run into me.
No begging to join me.

My husband makes me feel beautiful.
I am 32 and a half weeks pregnant.
I'm big.
And I'm older and tired.
My skin is drying out, and my lips have faded.
My hands are getting kind of papery.
My hair is frizzier than it used to be.
But he treats me like I'm beautiful.
It's my sixth child I am pregnant with.
He doesn't say things like,
"Have you thought about maybe getting a gym membership 
and getting back what you once had?"
Or, "Maybe you could get laser treatment 
for some of those scars that are marking you up now."
I cannot imagine that he does not see these flaws.
They are glaring realities to me.
But he doesn't seem to see these flaws --
even though he packed the wounds that left them for me.

I think I'd even rather have the scars that mar me
just to see how he looks at me like I am beautiful anyway.
The reality is that I am not more beautiful than I was
in my young, strong, healthy, unmarred body.
But weirdly, I feel more beautiful to him now than I did then.
I'm more confident in his love than I was.
I don't feel like I have to hide from his eyes,
in order to maintain the illusion of perfection.
If, in his eyes I am perfect, I will accept his verdict.
And where perfection was lacking,
he helped bring it about with his own hands.
Not the perfection of an airbrushed photo,
but the perfection of healed flesh and whole skin.
Of function where there was brokenness.
When I first saw the damage, I cried.
I couldn't look until it was nearly done healing, and I still cried.
But he saw it in every stage, and he never recoiled.
He didn't cry, and he didn't criticize, and he didn't complain.
He changed bandages twice a day.
And he did the dishes while I laid there.

Husbands:
if you want to be married to a beautiful woman,
let your love make her beautiful.
Don't compare her to the unflawed women you see.
The ones who haven't borne your children in their bodies.
Don't shame her for the thing that she is.

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

You make me new, You are making me new
You make me new, You are making me new

Second and First

I took my son to his second piano lesson today.
Second is a key word to what follows.
His teacher seemed quite pleased with his ability to hear the music.
I do not play the piano, although a number of people in my family do.
I brought a book along, intending to read.
But I kept being distracted by overheard reminders
to sit with a strong back,
and to keep his hand positioned in a hill, and not a valley.
In spite of the repetition of these reminders,
it was obvious she was pleased with his musical inclination.

His teacher taught him a new warm up.
He played it, and then asked her
if he could show her something it reminded him of.
"Yes, of course."
He haltingly worked out a tune, faltering a little at first,
and then plainly resolving into It Is Well With My Soul.

Scenes from my uncle's house, while he lay very sick
with his parents and siblings around him singing this came to mind.
Laughter through tears, and joy in sorrow.
A few months later, they were singing my Grandma home,
with the same uncle brought in through video phone calls.
So many songs of faith and hope in pain and death.
When I recognized the music, I cried.

I do not know
what parents usually experience with their children's piano lessons.
This is my first time.
But my son stuns me.
As we got into the car to leave, I said,
"I've never heard you play that one before."
"Well, that's the first time I ever played it, Mom. That's why it wasn't right."
Ah.
The first time you ever played it, it was nearly in a flash of inspiration
from hearing a short warm-up exercise?
Of course.
"Hey, next time pick something I can hear without crying."

Beautiful Things

Hilary and Kate made me cry with their beautiful music tonight.
I wanted to share it with you, too.
Please go listen to this.

His Marks Will Cover The Whole

In between daytime and nighttime trips to an observatory for my son's birthday, we stopped to explore the Maryhill Museum. The grounds were beautiful, and I always enjoy looking at art, and the Native American artifacts drew our attention, too. Especially the waterproof parka sewn from seal intestines, and the intricate beadwork with its vivid depictions of flowers and animals.

But we wandered into a display of pottery made by Ken Standhardt that resembled basketry, and had a video playing showing the artist's technique, and that stopped me for awhile. What is it about the process of art that moves me so? I watched as the potter shaped and roughly centered the clay, as he moved it to suit his will, and gave grace to a blob, and symmetry to dirt, and made it into something beautiful. The pot's shape was complete, symmetrical, its future clearly marked out in its form. But he cut it from the wheel, and set it on a shelf. "He is preparing the surface for his mark," the narrator said.

You see, it wasn't ready. It was a pot, and it had purpose, but it was not able to receive the impression he wanted to put on it. It needed to dry out for awhile. It needed the texture of leather before he could mark it. Have you ever felt like you've been set down, and left to dry for awhile?

His tool was a can opener. Mainly. He also used a ball point pen. What common things press my soul, and leave a mark? In His hands, any instrument can work together for my good. Does it feel like He makes the same mark over and over again? But I wanted variety, and uniqueness in the outcome. And again, I feel the same shape pressed into me. Over and over, again and again. And I am supposed to yield. Trust Me: don't be afraid. Trust Me: don't be afraid. I need to mark this side, now. Trust Me: don't be afraid.

The designs he pressed into the pots were mesmerizing. He said people asked him how he got them so perfect, when he had no plan and didn't measure before he began to press his tool in the clay. "There's plenty of imperfection in each individual impression," he said. But the overall body of the work appeared perfect. How often I feel the individual marks made in my life have imperfection in them. But He is the potter, and I am the clay, and in the end, His marks will cover the whole.

You can watch him work here.

Broken and Gilded

We took our children to the Museum of Fine Arts on Saturday,
where there was much to wonder at.
In the Asian arts section, a strange shape across the room caught my eye,
and I walked over to look at it.
It was unusually shaped, glazed and gilded pottery of some kind.
I read the plaque explaining about it.
The artist (Yee Sookyung) had collected potters' discarded fragments --
so many pieces that were broken and tossed out
by those who knew what they were doing.
Professionals with tasks at hand had done their work,
and when a piece did not measure up, sent it to the trash pile.

But an artist had a plan.
Collecting these useless broken pieces,
she set out to use an ancient technique for pottery repair.
Gluing each piece together carefully,
she formed a misshapen vase out of those pieces rejected by their owners.
But she wasn't finished when she glued them.
Each broken edge, glued to other broken edges,
made one by her skill, was gilded.
All the breaks were painted with gold.

The finished piece
was certainly not what any potter would have set out to form.
But an artist did.
It is called a "Translated Vase".
And while the pots those professionals made
were probably sold in shops to be used in households,
the artist's work is displayed in an art museum.
Every day, hundreds of people walk past it,
and they look at the gilded edges of broken discarded trash
and they read the name of the artist.

God, being rich in mercy, 
for his great love wherewith he loved us, 
even when we were dead through our trespasses, 
made us alive together with Christ (by grace have ye been saved), 
and raised us up with him, 
and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus: 
that in the ages to come 
he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus: 
for by grace have ye been saved through faith; 
and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 
not of works, that no man should glory. 
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, 
which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.
~Ephesians 2:5-10

Best Where It Breaks

I washed fresh basil from my garden,
and broke off leaves and added them to the quartered cherry tomatoes.
My husband picked up a stem and breathed it in.
"Why does it always smell the best where it breaks?" he said.
"Because that's where the oil is released," I said, absentmindedly.
"Just like in real life," he answered.

Morning Glories Glory in the Morning

I planted morning glories this year.
Dark purple ones.
Early last week, when I was watering in the evening,
I noticed the first one had bloomed.
And I had missed it.
You see, I leave my window blinds closed most of the summer.
They are old windows, and they seep heat into the house.
And we live on a crowded street, and I grew up in the country.
I like my privacy.

I could look at the spent blossoms, and say,
"God doesn't let me see the beauty
that everyone else gets from their morning glories...
To me, they are just shriveled husks."
Or I could open my blinds in the morning, and look out at their glory.
This morning I remembered to look out.
And I, too, got to enjoy the beauty of my morning glories.
Have you looked out the window lately?
Or are you sitting inside with your blinds down,
claiming the beauty has passed you by?

Thank You, Father, for morning glories in the morning.

A Good Day To Breathe

I looked down my street
and saw boiling slate clouds behind the steeple.
Normally the steeple looks gray,
but it looked white against that backdrop.
The other direction was bright with piled gleaming white clouds.
Toward the darkness again,
three seagulls small in their distance,
riding in advance of the lightning that flashed behind them,
and the thunder that rumbled toward us.
My wind chimes played crazily when the wind picked up.
Cool air coming.
A greening sky.
We ate our dinner almost silent.
"I like the ones that snap," Talia said.
"I like the growling ones, too, though," I said.
Soft at first, the rain poured down.
Jeff and I went out on the porch and sat down on the loveseat.
One by one, the kids followed.
Three climbed onto us with their bony wiggles.
That scent -- that God-cleaned air full of cold moisture.
I leaned back and looked up at the changing light in the sky,
and the flashes,
and the storm drain across the street with the spouting insurge.
It's a good day to breathe.

The Beauty That It Is

When my husband and I went to Israel, 
the tour guide reported to us that the weather forecast was hot and dry 
for the entire time we were going to be there. 
In February. 
It is supposed to be the rainy season. 
Of course, we tourists were delighted.
We had come from a cold winter.
But the guide said it was bad news for the people who lived there.
They needed rain.

Rain.
Why do we complain about it? 
Liquid water is so necessary to our existence that without it we die.
Our crops fail.
Our forests burn.
Our land withers up and blows away.
But we only want it when it isn't given.

See it for the beauty that it is. 
And use it for restful meditation. 
Rain is one of the mercies of God, 
sent on the just and the unjust alike. 
It ought to remind us to be kind as He is kind
to those who love us, and those who don't.
To forgive.
To provide nourishment.

My husband bought me a rain barrel last week.
I have been waiting for this rain to drip from my gutters into my barrel,
so that when the sun shines, 
I can water my plants with His mercy.

Into the Ultraviolet

What you see is what you get.
Seeing is believing.
Is it?

I have been reading a book called
The Mysteries and Marvels of Science with my children.
Today we read about light and color:

"Some animals can see colors that can't be seen by humans. 
Many insects, birds, fish and reptiles 
can see beyond the violet end of the visible spectrum, into the ultraviolet. 
Many fruits that look dark to us, such as plums, 
look bright and inviting in UV, 
so birds and insects are attracted to them 
among the much darker looking leaves."

This was accompanied by two photographs,
one of solid yellow silverweed flowers with no patterns or markings,
as the flower is perceived by the human eye,
and the other of the exact same flowers
photographed with a UV lens,
which revealed it to have vivid red center patterns
with brilliant blue marks amid a white edging.
You can watch a short video about the UV vision of bees here.

So, which view is reality?
I read this little blip and stared at these photographs,
and thought about things I can't see.
My spectrum is too short to see glory.
I see boring blah when I am looking right at brilliance.
I see coming doom when I should see chariots of fire.
I see people's failures when God sees their faith.
Is this why He tells me I must walk by faith, and not by sight?

Is this why He is Judge, and not myself?
"My friends, as believers in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, 
you must never treat people in different ways 
according to their outward appearance."

Perhaps the dull daisy growing with the grass is more colorful
than the roses showcased under the arbor.

"When the LORD spoke to you from the fire on Mount Sinai, 
you did not see any form. 
For your own good, then, 
make certain that you do not sin 
by making for yourselves an idol in any form at all---
whether man or woman, animal or bird, reptile or fish."

"No man hath seen God at any time; 
the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, 
He hath declared Him."

'Jesus answered, "For a long time I have been with you all; 
yet you do not know me, Philip? 
Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father. 
Why, then, do you say, 'Show us the Father'?"'

He is the lens through which I see the Unseen --
because my eyes can't see past violet.
He is my vision, my translation, my Light.

Embroidering Color

"Finally, brethren, whatever things are true,
whatever things are noble,
whatever things are just,
whatever things are pure,
whatever things are lovely,
whatever things are of good report,
if there is any virtue
and if there is anything praiseworthy --
meditate on these things."
~Philippians 4:8

I memorized this when I was ten. And was irritated by it. It seems so impossible in a world full of ugly. It requires a training of the mind. It isn't that ugly isn't there when you choose to look at beauty. But you can make a conscious choice to hope. To see light in His light. To suffer pain and sorrow, and still smile at your child's laugh.

In severe pain, when I saw no good future, and wondered if I was going to live, I could still see a lovely thing here and there. Just looking at the way the light falls on a rock wall, and the yellow leaves hanging over it, and noticing it, and absorbing its loveliness can minister to your soul. Choose to see.

Is it pretending to have a better life than you do? Not if it's true. The enemy would have us look at every dark corner, every squalid pain. I think of Corrie Ten Boom's book when she recounted the miserable colorless existence inside a cell. But she (or was it her sister?) pulled out colored threads and embroidered them onto her nightgown.

Lord, train our eyes to see and our hands to sew the colored threads You give into the drabness of our experiences.

Through the Dark

Beautiful
Beautiful
Jesus is beautiful
And Jesus makes beautiful things of my life
Carefully 
Touching me
Causing my eyes to see
That Jesus makes beautiful things of my life

Fourteen years ago, this is the song our wedding party walked down the aisle to.

In fourteen years, there has been a lot of unbeautiful.
And we have seen the Lord's hand working with ugliness to make it beautiful.
Working in pain to bring joy.
Transforming sickness to healing.
Restoring brokenness into function.
Walking us through the dark in the light of His Son.

Our children are some of those things that were not --
called into being by His mercy and love.
Our two beings joined into four individuals --
each one me, each one him, and none of them alike.
How many different ways He makes the two become one.

So many memories now.
When we married, it was almost all hopes.
Hopes for children and home.
Hopes for experiences together.
And now, here they are... dreams made flesh.
Different than I imagined.

Finding their own joys, and sharing them with us.
Drawing their own pictures of their own hopes.
Walking through their own confusions,
fumbling out their own prayers.

He makes all things beautiful in His time.

Fragile by Design

Jeff and I took the kids to the beach the other day. (This is a miracle. It's May, and in my state, you don't wear your swimsuit to the beach or touch the water until July.) All of us enjoyed finding crabs, those weird long bivalves whose name I don't know, mussels, seaweed, sea urchin shells, snails, driftwood, and plenty of rocks for throwing. Isaiah and I picked up every sea urchin shell we could find. They're just so remarkably beautiful. I've always admired them. Several were so delicate that in picking them up, they broke in pieces. An hour or two after we'd gotten there, I picked one up, showed it to Isaiah, said, "It's fragile," and broke it.

"Well, mom, it's meant to be fragile," he said.

"What?"

"It's because it has those things in it. It was designed to be fragile."

I turned over the part of the sea urchin that was left, wondering what 'things' he was talking about. It had some muddy looking sand in it. "What things?"

"I can't remember what they're called. But do you see how they break so evenly? It's made to break like that."

I had not seen. I had only noticed they broke. I rinsed the urchin out, and looked more carefully. I broke it slowly, watching for 'things'. One broke in a perfect zigzag. I broke off another bit, which followed a perfect waved line. I found another intact one, and looked inside it. And then I saw the 'things'.
They're perforated. They have tiny, perfect, brilliantly beautiful perforated designs dividing them in sections vertically. And in between the sections, the shell is like honeycombed bricks. It took my breath away to look at it. I held one up to the light.

Wow. They're designed that way.

Looking Beautiful

Elisa was prancing around in her princess things the other day, and said, "Do I look beautiful, Mom?"

"You do look beautiful, Elisa. Do you want to know what God thinks is beautiful?"

She looked curiously at me. "Does He think headbands are beautiful?"

"I don't know. But in the Bible it says that He thinks a gentle and quiet spirit is beautiful."

"Oh. But I don't want one of those."

(That's precisely the problem, isn't it?)