jakorte's blog

My sister-in-law made a darling quilt for a friend’s daughter, and I offered to make a matching Teddy Bear from the scraps.

I have a pretty tight deadline for this project, and I really needed to get a lot of that bear completed last night. However, nothing was going well.

The sewing machine tension decided to over-tense, the upper thread tangled in the bobbin works, the leader foot kept jamming, the thread broke numerous times, I ran out of bobbin thread, and finally the sewing machine needle broke.

It was then that I noticed I forgot to include the bear’s ears while sewing her head, and her back seam was not in line with her front seam. Here I was trying to do something nice, and all I got was frustration.

I threw everything into an angry pile on the dining room table and gave up. I walked away thinking, “Really, LORD! What am I supposed to be learning from this?�

Before I left for work this morning, I grabbed the sad semi-assembled bear and threw it in my tote bag planning to deconstruct everything during my lunch hour.

Happily, I found I had some time to spare while waiting to pick up my first passenger of the morning. So, I grabbed the ear-less head and my brand new seam ripper hoping to get the mistake undone quickly.

It should have been a fairly easy task, but even with the sharp new ripper, I had to painstakingly remove each over-tensioned stitch one by one. Being extra careful not to accidentally tear the fabric, I wasn’t getting anywhere fast.

That’s when the “Oh!� of realization hit me.

It’s sort of like what the LORD must be going through with me.

I am stitched so tightly to my past that each thread must be gently and slowly torn from me. Ripping away my foundation too quickly would just leave me with tiny tears and in scattered pieces. All of my parts need to be patiently repositioned, and realigned, so I may be re-made, re-souled, and re-minded.

jak