Good Yarn

“Given good yarn, good workmanship, and good care, a knitted shawl can outlive its knitter, providing warmth and pleasure to several generations of family and friends.”  - Martha Waterman

“... everyone has to knit when they're here. ... But not every person has to use yarn.”  - Kate Jacobs

There must be hundreds of profound, metaphor-filled essays I could write about knitting, threads, and my grandmothers. But tonight, just this.

Recently, I was ensconced next to the fire with a good book, covered by my two dogs and a knitted throw. Nudging the dachshund to the side, I tugged the blanket up over my shoulders and it occurred to me that my grandmothers’ knitted throws are as enduring as they were.

The blanket that covered me when I had this thought is a generous and beautiful creamy confection of braids, cables, bobbles, and other twists and turns of thread that I’m sure have names. I just don’t know them. It has comforted me or some one of my friends or family every day for the last twenty-five years. It has covered babies just beginning, and old people getting ready to end, and sick kids, sick dogs, and homesick guests.

But it’s a magic blanket. Once a month, I toss it into the washer with a load of towels, dry it in the drier, and it comes out fresh, beautiful and if anything, even slightly cozier than it was before. It’s suffered only one bit of trauma over the years (a bobble chewed apart by a puppy) which was repaired by another of the Grandmothers, the one who had knitted it having gone to be in His presence.

In fact, the lady who I received this blanket from wasn’t even related to me. She was my father’s brother’s wife’s mother. The anthropologist I married twenty-five years ago tells me some cultures have a kinship term for that relationship, but I called her what my cousins called her - "Grandma Miller." My memories of her are restricted to a few childhood interactions. In my mind she is an older version of her daughter, my Aunt Helen – a country woman, ever efficient, always prepared, with an infectious laugh and a deep love of her family and her Savior.

One day, not long before my marriage, my mother was having a visit with Grandma Miller and Aunt Helen. Mom mentioned my impending nuptials, which were ever on her mind at the time. Though third in line, I was the first of my siblings to take the plunge, so this was a big deal for my mother and she was very anxious and a little excited. I’m not sure if Grandma Miller started the blanket then, or it was already in process, or one that she had finished. At any rate, it appeared as a wedding present and has outlasted the stoneware and the kitchen appliances and the cutlery.

It makes me wonder - what was she thinking? She couldn’t have known how enduring her creation would be, but even so, what an amazing gift. A present for a child that she must have remembered as extremely shy. I'm sure she was one of my many relatives surprised I’d managed a life that would result in a union with a man. Crazy spinster librarian or writer, along the lines of Emily Dickinson or Donna Reed in the scary part of It’s a Wonderful Life, were more my expectations for myself. One only wonders what Grandma Miller must have thought.

Was the afghan a celebration of the improbable? Perhaps. More than likely, given the knowledge of an opportunity to be generous and celebrate the joy and sacredness of marriage, the dear woman seized the moment and claimed it with lavish kindness. That’s the sort of person she was, I think. And this blanket reminds me of her every day, and every day encourages me toward lavishly kind gestures, given the opportunity.

Oh, and here comes a metaphor. When I wrap this blanket around me, I can’t help but think of my wedding day, and all the days after. My marriage - a little chewed here and there, sometimes soiled, cleaned and repaired. But with just a little care, it keeps me warm, reminds me to be generous, and year by year becomes ever cozier.

All Things New

“The journey of discovery has just begun. In many ways this moment is more dangerous than wartime.” – New Old Libya, National Geographic, Feb. 2013

“Reality is not human goodness, or holiness, or heaven, or hell – it is redemption.” – Oswald Chambers

Most of the characters in my stories begin as a reflection of one aspect of me or someone I know. Then I and the story turn them this way and that, build them up, break them apart, add and delete. There comes a point when their traits coalesce and I solve the Rubik's cube of who they are. That's when they come to life. They become real.

Current events remind me that life does something similar to each of us. I was particularly struck by that truth, recently, while reading about present-day Libya. There are many people who would argue that we have no control concerning the direction of our lives. Choice, they would say, is an illusion. Perhaps they are right. But there can be long stretches of time where the narratives of our lives feel plausible. Day follows night, follows day. Choices are made much as they were made before. Natural consequences ensue. Then –

BAM!

The incomprehensible confronts us, spins us around and drops us in a new universe. We find ourselves in a place so implausible we're tempted to think, this is a dream. Often the shift comes as a result of traumatic circumstances – the death of a loved one, loss of a job, divorce, disease, war – something particularly painful or shocking that shatters our world and demands that we reexamine our expectations and beliefs about who we thought we were.

After decades of a Qaddafi reign that was “one of orchestrated chaos,” most Libyans appear to understand that they must seek a different path. A police chief: We can’t do mass punishments the way Qaddafi did. We must act according to law. This is what we’re trying to achieve in a new Libya. A female surgeon: The Libyan women are very strong, very clever. We’re managing… But she goes on to confess a common sentiment, I’m worried about everything – which leads to a common thought – "How does a nation go about cleansing its soul?"

Or for that matter, how do any of us abide in the ever changing nature of existence without losing ourselves? Abide in Me, Jesus said, and also, anyone who makes it their object to keep their own life safe, will lose it; but whoever loses his life will preserve it. When confronted with the tectonic shifts of life, we have two choices: We can retreat into the madness of denial (like Qaddafi) ever attempting to remold this new world into a replica of the old. Or, pilgrim-like, we can determine to trust and to hope one more time and step forward.

Is this what God meant when He said, See, I make all things new? Somehow, we imagined something different, didn’t we? Which is how we know that this is His imagination at work and not ours.

Each time I embrace new circumstances in which God has placed me, I lose some of the narrative of my future self that seemed so inevitable when I was a child. Letting go of those previous drafts of me starts with grief and ends in freedom . Each time I take that step, I feel less tethered to this world and more deeply grounded in the reality of redemption. And isn’t that the point? This world, this body, this you, this me – is not our home.

There will come a day when He will bring us to our end and we will step into eternity. Finally! To feel the joy of every shattered and remade piece coalesce and settle into perfect place. We will see Him face-to-face, fall into His arms, and know who we are. We will become real.

Read the whole article, New Old Libya, Draper and Steinmetz, National Geographic, February 2013 - and pray for the Libyan people and so many others in Africa and the Middle East who are in a state of transition, a state in which God can do miraculous, transformational things. A note about the amazing photo of a Libyan woman that I shamelessly pirated off the internet. I could find no information about attribution or rights for this photo. If you own the rights to this picture, I will happily remove it at your request, or better yet, provide attribution.