So far, I’ve made one thing.

Well, three things, if you count this:
and this:

Clearly, these are confidence boosters, so I decided to actually try to make something useful. I looked around on the internet and found this:

Looks easy enough, right?

So I took this shirt that has never fit Ellie right:

and this red corduroy dress that also never fit into her wardrobe well:

combined it with this tablecloth:

and made this:

Now, we’re all familiar with my fear of crafts, so this owl is significant for several reasons.

The first is the obvious. It’s my first sewing project.

The second, a little less obvious, is that it’s not perfect and I did it anyway.

The third, even less obvious, is that Ellie loved it so much she took it to bed with her.

When my little 2 1/2 year old gem parades around the house with her new stuffed owl that she watched Mommy make just for her, when she names it Mr. Owl and says repeatedly, “I love Mr. Owl. He’s so beautiful, ” my heart swells and the Father lets me in on a beautiful truth.  What I make doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth making and to be worth loving. And that gives me freedom to explore and experiment and let my imagination of who I am and what I can do run wild.

Yesterday when I saw my friend Rebecca parading into the church building after the service carrying a sewing machine box, I started to shake a little bit.

Last weekend, I led worship at the women’s retreat for this same group of believers, and she had overheard me commenting that I had been wanting a sewing machine for years. She had one in a closet, and she brought it to me. Awesome. I cried.

This tells me several things about how the Father loves me:

1. He uses my friends to love me. Next time I have the “hmmm, I should give her this” idea, I’m going to ask the Father if he wants me to act on that, because I want to bless someone’s heart the way Rebecca blessed mine.

2. He is an advocate of me conquering my fear of crafts. Stay tuned for pictures of my sewing adventures.

3. He does not save his extravagance for the “big” stuff. Sometimes, he just wants to leave me a little I-love-you note in my lunch box.

If you’re like me, you think the old hymns are fabulous.  I think they’re so fabulous, that I led several of them for some women this weekend at a women’s retreat in Estes Park. I love to think of the many generations that have sung these songs; it brings me comfort and speaks to the constant companionship of the Father and about his history of goodness and restoration.

So, here is one for you: Great is Thy Faithfulness. I hear my mother’s lovely voice every time I hear or sing this hymn.

Sometimes when I talk to a friend about life–about it’s hardships, about it’s joys–I doubt that I know the right thing to say. Maybe it’s just me, but I start to think in my head about what other people would say to the situation at hand. Usually my mind goes to someone I love and respect, someone who challenges me, someone who always seems to have something useful to contribute. My mind goes to her–or him for that matter–and I wonder what he or she would say. And then I try to say it.

But that makes me tired. And the journey into what-would-_______-say takes me away from the conversation I’m having, and that makes me a worse friend and listener. So as I’ve gotten older and closer to the Father, and as I’ve chosen to rest more in Christ in me, I’ve also decided to go with the route that takes the least effort in conversation and keeps me squarely focused on my friend: I say what I would say.

For example, if I know someone’s coming over for coffee to talk about something heavy and I don’t know how to respond, my husband usually says: well, say what you would say.

It’s great. It’s a practice in trusting the Father in me. In truly believing that with Christ in me, I have what it takes to be a great friend, despite what the enemy might try to tell me. That maybe my friend is talking to me because she needs to hear what I would say, and that if she needed to hear what _______ would say, she’d go talk to her. Novel thought, isn’t it.