This afternoon I cleaned out my lounge. Four people and a cat in the house all the time during lockdown means mess, and lots of it, especially when two of those people are little ones. I need a clear, uncluttered space around me to maintain a clear, uncluttered headspace, otherwise my mental health begins to suffer. However the tools of my mobile Music Therapy business having to be out of the car boot and in my lounge has made that almost impossible.
So I began to organise. To do jobs I’d been putting off, sort things that needed to be sorted. One of which was a bag with a crochet blanket in it. A friend at Church had given it to me, as it had started to untangle. The blanket was no longer needed, and my friend had wondered if I could salvage any of the yarn. The first step to this would be untangling the mess of already tangled yarn, before gently ‘frogging’ the rest (frogging being the crocheters term for undoing your stitches, commonly understood to have come from the sound of ‘rip it, rip it’). But having been at it for hours already, did I really have it in me to start on a time consuming, fiddly and always frustrating job?!
I felt some part of me stir, and yearn for some stillness. So I sat, and began to ease the yarn away from knots, gently pulling to find ends, and teasing the curls out of eachother. As I did this, I couldn’t help but think of the Kendrick song ”Beauty for Brokenness“. I was salvaging this broken blanket to make something beautiful out of it. It may be tangled, in pieces, but it still had more to give, it could still be used. As I worked, I was thinking of all the different things I could make, a new blanket, a scarf, a cardigan … so many options.
I wonder if God looks at us in such a way. If They look at the tangled mess we make of the life we’ve been given, and as they gently tug on the strands to straighten us out they dream through the possibilities of where to lead us next. Could she go back to Uni, could he find his soulmate, are they ready for their call?
Peace be with you.
Deconstructing Church 