After a recent visit to the Arts and Crafts shop on the military post where we pick up our mail every month, my eldest daughter got a free sewing project and is now eager to learn to sew. My mother was an amazing seamstress and so I’m thinking about what she taught me about needles and threads before she died and how I came to this idea of Holy Threads.
In truth, it had nothing to do with handicrafts but my interest in how God is spinning a story through our lives. We tend to make a spiritual life into something huge but most of what is being spiritual is paying attention and pausing to wonder.
That patchwork is different for all of us but here are a few of the fragments from this month that have called me into greater awareness of God’s creative movements.
As my children grow older, I find I’m in a new season of grief. They are now both the age where my mom was sick. I didn’t know she was sick at the young age of my youngest daughter but I knew something was wrong. Their awareness of the world is teaching me all over again to pay attention to the ways that these old wounds still bring pain and sorrow.
I’ve found so much comfort in listening to Anderson Cooper reflect on the death of his mother on All There Is and am thinking more and more about how this thread of my story will weave into the work that I do in spiritual direction.
Our family took a road trip through Slovenia and Croatia earlier this month which brought me to the edge of many a lakeside. It also gave me lots and lots of ideas for Retreat to the Lakeside which I’ve already started working on. These were not the lakes where Jesus first called the disciples and perhaps those were not even lakes as I dive back into the actual scripture but inland waterways. It wasn’t in this place in Slovenia that hope and healing was offered but I can’t help but think of Olaf’s wisdom that “water has memory” and that somehow that memory connects these places and every drop of water that has ever been.
We hiked through the Mostnica Gorge near Lake Bohinj one afternoon and that’s what I was thinking. Where have these waters been? Where are they going? What do they remember about carving out this place in the mountains, if anything?
My husband often quarrel about whether or not people are inherently good. I come down firmly on the side of yes. People can do terrible things and cause so much pain but everyone is good inside. His days in the United States Army cause him some severe doubt on this matter but I am reminded of this persistent hope in myself when I picked up Dr. Becky Kennedy’s Good Inside while on vacation.
It’s a parenting book and that might be the season you’re in but it posed a question I needed to be asked. It’s a question my own spiritual director asked again yesterday and just in case it’s the question you also need to hear amid all the things that are using you about over people and their behaviors. Dr. Becky asks, “What’s coming up for ME in this situation?”
I got to spend a weekend with one of my dearest friends tasting champagne in France. I know. This is not normal but the beauty and wonder of reconnecting with an old friend and talking about all the things that matter is truly a gift. I don’t get to experience that much while living abroad and I’m grateful for every connection with the people that truly get me and remind me of my best self. It’s good to remember who we are connected to and who knows us best.
What fragments do you find yourself keeping among the fat quarters of life? Maybe you’ll never actually sit down and sew that quilt but there must be pieces that you’d like to remember and taste. There are things that you want to keep in your ears and hold before your eyes. What are those things for you this August?
If you are interested in spiritual direction and are interested in a first conversation with me, please reach out or go ahead and book an appointment here. I am currently welcoming new directees and would be delighted to explore the holy threads of this life with you.
I am a hand-patcher and tie my quilts, so even the baby ones take a long time. And that is what I love about them. One a couple years ago had 600 four inch pieces, each a different fabric (I had to crowd source on Facebook). In our hands is so much beauty.