Progress

Oh boy!  I started the year out with the intention to blog every week... my last blog was in January.  It is now the last week in March.  Sigh.  No, not sigh, PROGRESS.

I am participating in a group study, going through Lisa Terkeurst's book "UNGLUED".  She talks a lot about "imperfect progress", and I am trying to grab hold of that idea.  The Lord truly knows (and so do I) that I AM imperfect, I am trying to hold on to the truth that stepping toward my goals and not meeting them is progress.

So, in the spirit of that, I am going to share a quilt I finished in February.  Then I'm going to do something that is difficult for me, I'm going to share the story of that quilt.

I started this quilt 10 years ago.  I completed 3 others before finishing this one.

For obvious reasons, the pattern is called "Starry Night".  I think the variety of stars is so much fun to look at!

This star is a nod to the joy and fulfilment I found in being a stage manager, I still miss that part of my life.

I'm very excited to have finished this project, as I said it's taken me just under 10 years.  The "why" is a difficult story for me to share.

When Andy and I went to South Africa, we went fully expecting to get pregnant during our time there.  This quilt began as my "Prayer Quilt" for our baby.  Africa was a difficult and rich time in my life. I accomplished things I never would have considered possible, I created intricate sets and staging out of nothing, made lifelong friends, experienced cultures some people have never heard of... and we did not get pregnant.

I finished hand piecing the top of the quilt 6 years ago in South Africa... and folded it away.  I was beginning to feel helpless and hopeless in this particular journey and I couldn't hold the quilt in my lap and work on it without having those feelings rise up in me.

It stayed folded away until January of this year.  I brought it out and finished it.  I am still not pregnant, and some days that seems even further away than it did when I folded my work away in South Africa.

However, I am no longer accepting "helpless and hopeless" in my life.  I am far from helpless. I am a capacitous, creative, loving woman with a deep abiding joy in Jesus that is my strength.  I am not hopeless, I am growing in hope. 

So, I don't know where this journey will end, but I am digging for my joy and my hope every day... kind of like getting a garden ready for Spring. 

To that end, I put the quilt up in our bedroom.  It's a baby quilt so it fits perfectly on my red bench.

 And I see it every morning when I wake up... and I smile.

 

Joy and Hope!

 

Karlie