Quilting a broken life

This weekend I was blessed to have a "free" weekend. I'm sad that I wasn't able to get together with a friend as planned, but it turned out good. I poured most of my time and energy into quilting. It was odd not to have children or dogs on me.

I listened to hours of praise music as I cut, ironed and sewed my quilt. As I was cutting, I remembered a friend's comment this week to another friend about "being broken right now". We all go through times when we feel broken. Suddenly, quilting struck me as very odd. I take yards of beautiful fabric to cut into small pieces and then sew back together.  I often feel like I should cut my quilt blocks even smaller to get a more intricate design. It occurred to me that my life is like that. Sometimes I feel like God really breaks me down into tiny pieces to be put back together again. This gets really frustrating because I feel like this "block" is perfect, but then it gets "cut up" again. In the end, you don't know how things will turn out until everything is put back together.

It's hard when you don't know what God has planned for you. One of my favorite verses came up on my phone today from Jeremiah.
 "For I know the plans I have for you", says the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give yo hope and a future Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you," declares the Lord, "and will bring you back from captivity".  Jeremiah 29:11-14

So that was my great "revelation" while spending hours by myself listening to praise music and sewing. Next time you see a quilt, look at how intricate it is with all the cut pieces carefully sewn back together and then the actual art of the quilting stitch bringing out something else in the fabric.