A Life In Pieces

The mid-life lesson I’m learning from a winter’s worth of frantic quilt completion is not about skill. As you can see, I have little. My stitches are free range and low on the count-per-inch chart. My seams rarely line up in proper fashion.

No, the message in all those bits of fabric — coming together into something big and whole — is about God’s daily mercies.

You see, this quilt began falling into place more than two decades ago. As we watched our two daughters outgrow item after item of clothing, the pieces too damaged to enter the neighborhood hand-me-down chain were washed, folded and stashed in a cedar chest.

A tiny green sleeper sprigged with pink blossoms was a keeper. So was an adult-sized fleece onesie from the thrift store. It turned into a cotton candy costume one Halloween. There’s also a single flannel pillowcase featuring a polar bear. This one once caused fits as to whose bed it would grace.

These damaged items lended themselves only to old-school quilting. No pristine fat quarters from the store. The multitude of four-inch squares was cut from whatever was stain free and strong enough to enter a second life. (Two snouts remained from the polar bear pillowcase, by the way. Two, thank God.)

A cold, snowy winter and yet another graduation inspired me to kick it into high gear at long last. (I technically started this quilt in 2021…)

Having the space and time in my life to handle each little piece of the past was illustrative. There were lovely times in the years represented in all that fabric. There were also trials of many sorts. Even for children, life is not all sunshine and roses.

But, the pieces came together. The sunshine bits. The thunderstorm bits. Pieces that were literally saturated in tears at one point or another.

The. Pieces. Came. Together.

Look. See them.

No master parenting plan brought this sudden unity and beauty about. We often felt blessed to have simply survived the day. No childhood prodigy produced this mystique. Life was and still is much too fast and furious for that.

This wholeness from pieces is simple. It’s the express picture of the daily mercies of a very good God.

I so need that message.

Our family is flexing into multiple new seasons. Change is fraught. But, the image of this quilt is stored on my phone and I look at whenever I’m frightened or in doubt — and hope bubbles up.

There’s so many things that we don’t know — so many opportunities and so many dangers. But, God is so good. And He knows just where today’s and tomorrow’s proverbial scrap of T-shirt or pillowcase or shredded denim is going to fit.

We watch. We pray. We do our best to do what He asks of us. He does the rest.

And, by His grace, these lives in pieces will surely come together.

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This blog post was written, for better or for worse, by a human being. 🙂