A good friend of mine was going through a terrible time and with God’s nudging I decided to make her a ‘personal sized’ quilt and pray for her while I worked on it.
As I cut out the material for the backing, I realized I didn’t have enough of the same fabric to finish it. So I improvised with another print and arranged a design with those specific blocks which I liked. I even took a picture of the back so I could put the quilt together just as I planned.
I lap quilt--so each block is quilted before I put all of it it together As I'm finishing, I realize I've sewn it wrong--- on the last row the 'extra' colored piece was in the wrong place.
I was mortified! I turned the quilt over, believing I’d totally ruined it, and burst into tears.... My mistake was now a cross! That was NOT me! That was totally a God thing and I still have no clue how I ‘messed it up’! All quilts since then, that I've given away, have a purposeful cross on the back, intentionally placed, by design!
We all make plans, whether they are for a trip we want to take, a list of things we want to accomplish, even weekly plans just to keep track of where we are supposed to be on any given day.
When things go wrong, even having to take a detour while driving, we can become frustrated because our plans had to change. Sometimes it’s just about the 'time it takes' to go another direction, --even though the destination is the same.
I admit, I love detours. I call it ‘taking the scenic route.’
We often think the interruption of our well laid out plan is the problem. Sometimes while driving we miss our road and have to keep going because there isn’t a convenient ‘turn around’.
We don't know why we missed that turn or what lies ahead on the alternate route. Perhaps we’ll see something we would otherwise have missed. Perhaps we'll have an unexpected opportunity to recognize God at work. Or perhaps we'll simply have to adjust and keep going!
Other interruptions bring people into our path. We’re frustrated because we are running late, and then it seems like we get behind every slow driver on the planet just to get to where we’re supposed to be. And to our surprise we have the opportunity to see and talk with someone we haven’t been around for years! Or perhaps we meet a stranger who needed a dose of kindness we were able to give.
We may never know why some of these interruptions happen, but we can remain open to the possibilities they bring.
Despite our well laid out plans, God sometimes leads us in a direction we never intended to go.
I was trying to solve a problem with my quilt. I was short of the required fabric, so I carefully planned a way to make up for it. But God did something that I never intended to happen. What I thought was a mistake became a lasting reminder of the Cross. It not only changed the quilt, but it changed me!
God reminded me that He cares about all areas of our lives— even the every day ones. I’m a quilter….who recognizes that He is present in every single quilt I create. He cares about the person who will receive it, and also me. What a gift!
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