Patchwork Quilt

Since I was a little girl, I fell asleep under patchwork quilts.  Quilts patched together of pieces of fabric from all kinds of things floating throughout the daily lives of the women who stitched them together. Flour sacks, old shirts worn too many days in a garden, dresses past their prime, leftovers from a pattern that made clothes for one of the family...every quilt was a merger of the leftover, over used, not-good-for-anything-else material left behind from daily life.

I guess you could say it was my first lesson in how God uses even the smallest of scraps in a beautiful way. Over the years, life (& the world) changed. Now, every nook and cranny in my house holds quilts made by my grandmothers and mom.  Some made of new fabric bought just for that purpose, some so old it took a lot of thinking and memories to piece together their stories, some just as average as they come but just as useful as their counterparts with unique stories.

It was while snuggled under one of these quilts one evening, that it hit me: MY LIFE is a patchwork quilt. Full of used parts, failures, mis-stitches, worn places, and yes....beauty.

And so, the idea was born for my blog. A place to share my crazy, random thoughts. A place to talk about self-forgiveness (& forgiving others). A place to share the stories that make my life what it is today. A life that is far from perfect, but still beautiful and purposeful.

Like some of the quilts I've "retired" through the years to preserve when I see them becoming tattered, my patchwork quilt of life is worn around the edges. It's mismatched. It's got a few rips and tears. Still, what can be learned of life it we live it safely?