These dark days

Over the last 10 days or so I’ve been marathon watching The Lord of the Rings Trilogy – the extended versions of course. Have you watched these movies? Have you read the books? The extended versions are closer to the original JRR Tolkein story. Honestly they totally could have made longer movies. That said when I get into major quilting mode I put these movies on the computer and watch to my hearts content. At the core these movies have hope as a central theme. Okay there’s way more, like love, forgiveness, betrayal, kindness, temptation, power, friendship, authority, kinship. Then there’s adventure, right, wrong, mental illness, obsession.

During Advent my sweetie and I light the wreath and have a moment of reflection before dinner. Last night as he read the word HOPE demanded my attention. HOPE. Hope is an action word embodying trust, faith, reliance that the thing that is desired will happen. It is looking for the Light instead of cursing the darkness. Living in hope means that I am the light for someone else, in what seems like dark days. We have about 2 weeks where the days become a little bit darker each day. The lighting of the candle is such a helpful reminder that we are almost there. That the light will return. That the light that fills our life is still there. There is HOPE.

The Fellowship at one point breaks up, but do they really? They all have work to do. Things happen along the way that are not particularly pleasant. In fact I’d say it gets downright ugly for a bit. And yet, there is hope. There is hope that Frodo, accompanied with Sam and Smeagol (Gollum) will complete their journey and destroy the one ring that has the potential to bind the world in eternal darkness.

The light is coming. The LIGHT is coming. The candles are a reminder of the Light and living in HOPE is the action that reminds. Even though there are a lot of tough things that happen in our days, hope lives. Hope for quilts to be completed. Hope for work to be gotten.

As I write memories pop up reminding me of moments of sheer frustration as I learned how to machine quilt. Walking out of the sewing room for days on end (what I now recognize as thinking time). Reading what I could about thread and needles and learning how to adjust the tension and the speed. Longing to work with metallic thread so that the tension is balanced (it mostly is now more on that on terificreations.com in a few weeks.) Working hard at lighting that quilterly candle so as to light the room, and help light the way for others. Hopefully showing that along the way a lot of hard work happened. Goodness gracious did a lot of hard work happen.

Oh oh oh! Oh! Hope is moving forward when things seem their bleakest. Hope is accepting that this is not the end. Hope is joy in this moment. Hope. I think HOPE is my faith word for 2017.

It is not an “oh I hope this will happen” dejected kind of thing, it is the action that “I trust that this is where I’m supposed to be going and what I’m supposed to be doing and I’m moving forward in that direction in spite of the twists, turns, and feelings that I’ve fallen flat on my face and skinned my hands and knees terribly.

Oh quilters there is so much here for us as we continually learn how to quilt. There is so much here for us as we continue to work towards better piecing and quilting. There is so much room to grow!

have HOPE!

God bless,

Teri