itsawonderfilledlife

I was unmaking the bed where our adult daughter had slept the night before. Sheets were deposited into the washer, mattress traipsed back into it’s storage. As I picked up the second of the two handmade quilts to fold, I noticed that one of them was in bad shape.

The quilted stitches …

were gone, as if they’d disintegrated (though, probably they just pulled loose).

Now the top and bottom fabrics were no longer holding, tightly attached to the quilt batt in the middle and I feared that the stability of the quilt was in danger.

This quilt, lovingly stitched by a multi-generational family of ladies I respected, adored, learned from and played with as a girl, was gifted to us as a wedding gift, almost thirty-five years ago. It is faded, fraying and now, coming apart at the seems …

much like any marriage of thirty-five years.

I felt a sadness creep into my heart as I lifted it into my arms, as I longed for it to be, once again, brand new.

The quilt or the marriage, one might ask … at that very moment, maybe both. Because, we have, after all, a very human marriage of two very flawed and selfish individuals.

I pondered disposing of the quilt,

but then, the more practical side of me took a closer look, a further consideration. The quilt, though originally beautiful, was not made to simply look good. The pieces of it were stitched together so that it would bring warmth to those covered by it, underneath it.

Immediately I thought how similar that is to marriage. Two individuals, like the top and bottom fabrics of a quilt, can be so beautiful on their own, or even together. Yet, the depth of their warmth is limited to what each person brings into the marriage.

When God is present … but not just present …

when the two allow Him to be connected to each of them and then they are tied together,

with Him at the center

then they are cooking with gas! And the warmth (literally) between them is the One who also sustains each of them as individuals (first) and them together (secondly).

Sometimes we think that simply being married to another Christ-follower is the most important ingredient. But it doesn’t take much thinking to come up with examples of married Christ-followers who do anything but love each other sacrificially, nor do they put the needs of the other ahead of themselves. Couples who do not even share of their walk with God, with each other.

These are examples of anything but Christ-centered marriages. They are made of a top sheet, a bottom sheet and a God in the middle who is not even truly stitched to either, let along to both.

No, if we want the warmth of God, we need to stay stitched, first to Him … individually,

then to each other with Him at the center.

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Walking through the halls of the secondary high school, people are smiling, jovial, friendly. It is the final day of classes and the relief of the school year’s end has brought joy to the hearts of everyone in the building.

The sense of community is strong in these last days, as we are all (students, staff) eagerly anticipating the same thing … the end of the school year. It is the shared anticipation of change, of rest, of other communities.

Final days can be especially joyous, especially when they precede something new.

The school years turns into summer.

The school years turn into graduation, jobs, travel.

The work year turns into summer vacation.

The dark seasons turn into light.

When it comes to school’s year end, it is the students who struggle, who hate this institution, whose gifts are best utilized outside of our places of learning. These institutes where the unnatural practises of sitting inside, under fluorescent lighting, with only people born the same year all day, every day, is the model, but also that successful learning is often different from loving to learn.

These are the ones I smile a knowing smile with, both of us aware that not only is summer coming, but so is freedom. Freedom to be who God made them to be, free to explore, free to create, free to move … free to breathe … free to heal.

Just As The Calendar Began to Say Summer
Mary Oliver

I went out of the schoolhouse fast
and through the gardens and to the woods,
and spent all summer forgetting what I’d been taught —

two times two, and diligence, and so forth,
how to be modest and useful, and how to succeed and so forth,
machines and oil and plastic and money and so forth.

By fall I had healed somewhat, but was summoned back
to the chalky rooms and the desks, to sit and remember

the way the river kept rolling its pebbles,
the way the wild wrens sang though they hadn’t a penny in the bank,
the way the flowers were dressed in nothing but light.

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