Quarantine is a great time to start a new project. Everyone I know is renovating, cleaning out closets, and organizing their homes. My dresser drawers are all Marie Kondo-ed, thanks to my daughter who ran out of things to organize at her place.
My project was mask making. I made over 600 masks. Over 500 of those were donated to local non-profits. I don’t say that to blow my own horn. I say that because that’s how laser focused I can get on a project. Sometimes it’s really hard to pump the brakes.
Once the demand for masks slowed down I needed a new creative outlet. One that I could do standing up after the hours spent sitting in my sewing chair. I reached way back into my childhood and remembered I used to like to macrame. I downloaded a $4 ebook and practised my knots. It all came back to me pretty quickly. Using yarn, I made a tiny plant hangar for my tiny spider plant baby living in a tiny terracotta pot. It turned out pretty cute. I tried a bunting, which is a weird word for a swag that hangs on a shelf. I was using baby yarn so it was, again, tiny. But it made a cute necklace once I blinged it up a little with a few sequins and beads.
I learned a new knot called a Chinese Crown Knot. Remember the old chinese finger traps? The more you pull the tighter they get? It’s kind of like that only it becomes a rope. I got the crazy idea to use strips of an old biscuit coloured sheet. It turned into a rope long enough to coil and sew into a cute little table mat, just the right size for my aloe plant. Well now I’m on to something!
I dug out a piece of denim. I cut it into half inch strips and started knotting. The rope will be long enough to make into a floor mat just inside the basement door where the dogs go in and out.
Hang in there — I promise you I’m going somewhere with this.
Denim ravels like it has been waiting its whole life to spring free from the restraint of the fabric. Wow — did I ever make a mess! I apologized to my cleaning lady and took my craft outside so the birds can benefit from the string bits for their nests.
So I’m sitting on my patio and knotting and making yet another mess when it hit me. God wants to use my story to weave into others stories, and His story, to make something beautiful and durable and useful. And it’s messy.
Oh, how many times I look at myself and see a hot mess.
When I look down I see a mess of string bits littering my patio. If I look higher, I see something that has great potential for beauty and purpose.
When I look down at my life I see the mess. Life is messy. When you do life with others it gets REALLY messy.
When I look higher…
I see relationships where I have been forgiven and I have forgiven. I see relationships that have been easy and fun, and also difficult and disappointing.
I see relationships.
Relationships that have been woven together by my Creator for the purpose of reflecting His beauty and His enduring love. Relationships, that if I just give my Creator time and trust and willingness to weave our stories as He sees fit, will turn into a beautiful display of His goodness and love.
I’m so grateful for the people I am in relationship with. It blows my mind when I look back and see the weaving God created, that resulted in the beauty of those relationships that I enjoy today.
Are you looking down and seeing nothing but a mess? Look higher. I hope you see what I see — the potential for beauty and purpose that God is creating in your life. Mess isn’t always bad. It’s usually proof that something new was crafted here.
Isaiah 43:19a says “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?”
Don’t worry about the mess, even if others point it out to you on a daily basis. You are being woven into a new thing. Into something beautiful!
