We can only Wonder at Every Gift You Give

We can only wonder at every gift You Give

Many mornings I wake up hearing a song lyric on repeat. This morning not so much. Nope, this morning I woke up in conversation with a couple of different people. Over time when this happens the clarity is there’s something the Good Father desires to enter into and I get to say, “yes” or “no”. This morning it’s yes.

Recently I’ve started quilting again in Teri Lucas style. There’s a piece of fabric and a starting point. There are two quilts like this in my head, and one I’m actually quilting. I think the name of the quilt is Eclipse, I’ll see how that stands up over time as the quilt take shape.

Note: this post is going to go back and forth between the quilting and the thinking/praying.

One conversation that stands out while in spiritual direction formation is a mentor saying to me that one thing they will miss is watching me make connection in my head. And I know what she’s talking about. I can see this particular formation day, sitting in about the middle of the room, and while I could not see the look on my face it must have said aha! while my eyes looked up and connected the dots of whatever is being taught. Over the two school years of formation this happened enough that she noticed and sometimes it would come up in our mentoring conversations.

As I dug into this morning’s internal conversation and what seemed to prompt it, the Holy Spirit in a delightfully rapid-fire way, very much like I can ask questions in the morning when I’ve been up for a little while and then someone joins me for coffee, connected the dots for me making the design clear.

Recently while teaching Beginner Free-Motion Quilting I gave my students one major insight from while I was learning to quilt – and that is, there are only two motifs in quilting – straight lines and curves, and they’re both hard. And further curves are a series of connected straight lines. I’ll give you a minute to go ponder deeply the meaning of this. Mind blowing isn’t it.

The connections this morning had to do with thinking process, learning style, education, the uniqueness of each individual human being, and how the Creators brings us healing and fullness of life through the circumstances of our experiences. These thoughts included wanting to be seen as having a different learning style, actually wanting to be seen as worthy despite the circumstances of living in the projects and being poor. And because of that poverty, life circumstances, and having a different learning style, teachers and others determining that I wasn’t smart and needing a lot of correction to conform and therefore fit in.

God Writes Straight with Crooked Lines

One of my favorite things to quilt is tiny bubbles, champagne bubbles. Tiny bubbles cannot be stitched quickly or too slowly. The need is for a good rhythm so that I’m not over pulling one way or the other causing the bobbin thread to migrate to the surface or the top thread to migrate to the back of the quilt. Either way and I’ll be picking out stitches. If you’ve ever unstitched a densely quilted area you know there is great care needed to maintain the fabric.

It took a long time to learn to quilt in the Teri Lucas style of quilting. And it’s taking a long time to learn/relearn who I’m created to be. I have a creative style of learning which I’ve both known for a long time and was affirmed in the conversation with my mentor. This led me to clarity in understanding why, for a period of time, there was need to distance myself from a particular family member to separate my identity from theirs. (There’s much that will end up in the pages of my journal that won’t end up here.)

The Holy Spirit then showed me that all of this thinking this morning is part of the healing process that started, what is for me, a long time ago. And that’s when the song lyrics popped into my head, giving this post the title. I can assure you that some of these life experiences were not gifts, however they give me compassion and empathy for others. Even for those who didn’t see, couldn’t see how the over-correction hurt, adding to the already gaping “I’m not good” wound. Oh Lord God forgive me for those times when I’ve added to someone else’s “I’m not good enough” wound either intentionally, in disregard, or in total ignorance.

Each little bubble is connected to the next and the next and through the continuity of the thread. Each moment of life is connected; each experience adds depth and dimension and beauty and messiness to the quilt of my life.

I wonder how this quilt will finish. I have an idea that actually made me giggle. Since I was in the first grade I’ve come back to one strong image, a mountain in the distance, a tree close in the foreground, sometimes there’s a river, sometimes there are flowers. There is something of this taking shape in this quilt, though there is still some obscurity in how this will happen. Just like life this quilt is revealed one moment, one stitch at a time.

Over the last few years I thought that my creative side wandered off into the desert places. It is in the last two months since finishing Spiritual Direction formation that I began to understand that the creative side took a necessary side trip with reading and writing as the heart. This rather big part of my identity seemed lost to me forever, yet it was still there growing in the maturity brought on through the healing process being led by the Holy Spirit. This realization is an incredible gift. As is the teaching quilting. There is something coming in that area too that I’ll post on TerifiCreations at the right moment.

Please keep praying for me as I pray for each of you.

Teri