the gift of needle and thread

I once bought a cd called Twenty-four Hours is All You Get.

It was a talk (or series of talks) done by a homeschooling mom of many.

As you can imagine, it was about time management.

Fairly early on in the disk,

she talked about how she'd enjoyed sewing, but she didn't sew anymore;

she'd given it up,

because she needed to spend that time in training her children.

She was encouraging us to do the same.

I quit listening to that cd.

~

Towards the end of summer one evening,

I was laying next to the girls for few minutes before they went to bed.

I stroked Lily's beautifully suntanned arm.

"I was going to get all nice and golden like that this summer," I sighed.

(thinking, "but then I got burned and had to stay out of the sun...")

"I know," she said, commiserating with me.

 "If you didn't have your gift, you could have gotten all dark.

But,

you have your gift.

So that keeps you busy. And you just don't have time to be out in the sunshine a lot.

Not everyone has a gift."

 (she's been watching lots of My Little Pony)

 "But you do.

Sewing is your gift."

~

Sewing is my gift.

And I am so grateful for it.
(There may come a time when God asks me to give up that gift,

but, by golly, it's going to have to be real clear to me before I do it.)

~

Like all of the other gifts I've been given,

I try to share this one, too,

and use my skills with a needle and thread to bless others.

I was texting with my sewing buddy a few weeks ago.

We were talking about what projects we have going on.

She's working on a quilt for her mom.

A memory quilt, with all of the fabrics chosen for a reason (not necessarily the aesthetics of the pattern).

She's got Elvis fabric.

green beans.

little crabs.

birds.

"If I don't get my mom's quilt finished, she won't even realize the significance of the material I chose for hers," I read.

Immediately, I got a lump in my throat.

Her mother 

was recently diagnosed

with Alzheimer's.

So I did what any good buddy with a gift would do;

I offered to share.

(Actually, truth be told, I had to get a little insistent with her ;-)

And over the course of a couple of weeks,

I put together a fabric puzzle

and made her quilt back for her momma's quilt 

sorry ~ I'd just snapped this real quick when I finished so I could text her.
Ya'll know how I like to text people crappy pictures ;-)

I love you, 'Net ~ I hope your momma remembers.

Linking up with Elizabeth's with needle and thREAD again. No books have been read lately :-(