Stitches, Flaws, Good Intentions

In many ways it was doomed from the beginning.

I am a rather inadequate seamstress with rather adventurous plans.  I enjoy the planning and scheming and designing (and the design) in far greater quantities than proportionally my skills allow…

Then…I get an idea.  Like the fact that the colors would in fact be my sister’s favorites, with no regard to any other details.  In fact, while I surprised my brother with his graduation quilt, I let Faith in on the fabric shopping so that it would be exactly what she wanted in terms of colors.  As fate would have it, we found the entirely obscure shade of deep purple she loves.  In the clearance bin none-the-less.  I bought several yards.  [Of a knit fabric that stretched in multiple directions.]  To match a cream and sage green.  The picture in my head was beautiful.

If you’ve sewn at all then you know that inadequate seamstresses should not sew with knit fabric.  It causes innumerable problems (especially if you hate to pin!  Which I do!). At one point I quit carefully pinning my pattern to the fabric so precisely to cut…as each square came out a slightly different size and shape anyway. 

And then, speaking of cutting, I hate cutting.  It’s tedious and tiresome.  It’s the pre adventure of designing and I would rather just compile the puzzle.  I should have considered this before designing a quilt that literally had a few THOUAND small pieces to be sewn together.  It made the project (which I started in late fall/early winter post her spring graduation) seem tedious and tiresome in and of itself.  It was already months behind schedule and I was bored.

And yet, just about the time I thought I found my rhythm…fail.  Utter fail. Because I messed up the design.  I missed a square somewhere in the process and the whole central system with large pieces already compiled in and around it – no longer fit together.  The perfectly designed intricacies no longer lined up and it looked ridiculous.  I quit.  I couldn’t reconcile the imperfection so I bagged up my fraying squares and folded the finished pieces and quit. 

For years. 

My sister graduated in 2008.  I designed and picked out fabric that summer.  Which means it has been five years.  (Even to write it is embarrassing…)  Oh, I’d picked it up a time or two but it seemed so daunting and I never got very far.  Plus, every time I tried to pick it up again, something more went wrong.  I sewed in the wrong square to the wrong spot (seam ripping to fix a mistake destroyed the fabric so it was of no use. Easier to just begin again).  Or the fact that I had moved it so many times without sewing in the loose ends they were beginning to fray.  Because the purple fabric stretched, even just a little, none of my strips ended up the same size.  So nothing lined up the way it was supposed to.  Which in some ways didn’t matter too much because the pattern already didn’t make any logical sense. 

And then, finally, this fall, I decided to tackle it.  I felt this sense of necessity to not leave projects unfinished.  I vowed to finish it.  Though it would be finished as a twin rather than a queen as first designed.  It wouldn’t match the original framework.  And it would be flawed.  I would just have to settle with the fact it would be… flawed. 

And flawed it was and is.  Because of course I accidentally sewed in that defunct strip (because I wasn’t paying very close attention.  Not until it was too late!) where I had earlier put in the wrong square and sewn over it. And then the tattered edges continued to fray amidst the sewn pieces…because the pieces were just so dang small.  And so I stitched OVER the top of the quilt in order to hold the fabric down.  And instead of trying to fight with cutting and sewing more pathetically inadequate squares, I then also changed the pattern at the ends to complete it. 

I managed to deliver a finished product.  In time to place it between Faith’s second wedding anniversary and her 28^th birthday.  Only four birthdays and four Christmases and five Easters and who knows how many arbitrary changes in time zones and exchanged daylight savings hours.  With much ado and much apology.  I actually think Faith was confused by the gifting as it had been so terribly long since it was once discussed.  And in quite a bit lesser of a condition than I ever would have wanted to gift.

“She’ll love it because you made it!” my best friend tried to promise me.  And indeed it might have been true.  But none-the-less…

I looked at the quilt and looked at Faith.  “Don’t be deceived” (as I might tell you as well) “it looks better than it is.”

And then I quoted Augesten Burroughs (incorrectly; I didn’t remember who it was who had first said it.) “I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.”  [He is known for saying.]  It was the epitome of my finished construction.  I meant well, I tried hard, I persevered.  But in the end, the flaws were held together with effort and hope alone and the beauty I had dreamed of and originally designed was lost inside of missed stitches, unmatched corners, faulty patterns, and messy compilation.

Of course I notice and am the first to point out the flaws.  I am, after all, the creator.  No one knows that quilt better than I do.  I know every stitch, every frayed edge, every mended hole, every missed pattern. I can tell you, from the front compilation, approximately which square has a small blood stain on the under side of the fabric from where I stabbed my finger viciously with a pin.  You might not look at it and see everything that’s wrong.  But I do.  I do because I created it.  And I know…

And it’s the thing that baffles me the most about God.  He, who created me perfectly and intricately in my mother’s womb and knows the number of hairs on my head (Psalm 139), is also well aware of the ways in which I have marred His design.  He is the Creator.  No one knows me better than He does! He knows every stitch.  And also every frayed edge, every quirky mismatched piece, every mended hole…  I oft find myself, like Augusten Burroughs, taking a look at my life and knowing I am made entirely of flaws…though I was, in fact, stitched with good intention.  And I wonder.  I wonder how it is God can look at me at not see all that is wrong…

What I think is miraculous (and I know this combines metaphors) is when people see the picture of the quilt their response is always something like “that is so cool!”  There is a little awe.  When Faith first saw the quilt (she took it in with the disclaimers of its imperfections first), her initial response wasn’t to say “Oh, I see what you’re talking about now with the missed pattern and the odd overlapping stitches...”  She said along the lines of “Oh wow!” followed by something near “Neek, this is pretty incredible!”  She, in her appreciation for it and love for me, redeemed it.  Redeemed its inadequacies. Redeemed its flaws.  Redeemed its good intentions.

What I think is even more miraculous is that when God sees me, (and others see me through God’s eyes alone I can’t help but believe…else why not see the things I so easily see?), He doesn’t focus on my missed stitches and mended holes.  He knows about them; He’s my creator!  Instead He sees HIS good intention.  One who is holy and dearly loved (Colossians 3:12).  And His love for me redeems me.  Redeems my inadequacies.  Redeems my flaws.  Redeems me FOR His good intentions.  And claims me.  “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.  When you pass through the waters; I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.  For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…” (Isaiah 43:1b-3a)

There is a DownHere song I love entitled “Here I Am”.  In it there is a line which reads “These broken parts, you redeem.  Become the song that I can sing… [Here I am. Lord, send me.  All my life I make an offering.  Here I am.  Lord, send me.  Somehow my story is part of your plan.  Here I am…]”.  It’s a gift of grace and a response of faithfulness.  Though the road and construction be coarse and mismatched and frayed… To redeem broken pieces makes it so my story (flaws and all) can be part of a bigger plan.  An end beauty.  A Good Intention…

 “Do you look at me and see the one you’re after?  Your daughter, Your princess, Your beautiful disaster…”

Beautiful Disaster

AJK March 2009

A mass of confusion.

Life in utter disarray.

A tragedy of grand design,

Your gifts I’ve tossed away.

No direction, no order.

Only failure of the worst kind.

Falling apart at the seams.

Begging for purpose one last time.

Do you really see beyond my distress?

Do you love me even with my mess?

When you look at me,

How can you not see all that’s wrong?

How do you not just notice

All that doesn’t belong?

I’m not anything close

To what I was created to be... 

Where’s the worth

In this calamity?

What’s beyond

My distorted focus?

Do you smile at what you see?

Is your grace wrapped in

Wonderful chaos?

Brilliant catastrophe?

Do you look upon a storm with the same awe?

The same love?

Is that the same splendor

You’re thinking of?  

Do you look at me and see the one you are after?

Your daughter, your princess,

Your beautiful disaster...