How to Let the Master Quilter Do His Work

As a child, I loved to run my fingers along the stitching of my grandmother’s quilts. They were a labor of love for her. Each time my mother reported an impending visit from the stork, my grandmother would smile and say, “I’ll get started on the quilt.” She’d stitch and pray, petitioning heaven with her hope that each of my siblings would “love the Lord all their days.” In this way, quilts and Jesus have always been deeply interconnected for me, almost like the patterns on the quilts themselves.

Not long ago, I took a seemingly straightforward trip. The goal was to support someone important at a crucial time, but the outcome was a mess of conflict and confusion in my heart and mind. I thought I was ready to revisit this space attached to old wounds and questions from my past, but instead the experience was as though someone ripped off a dirty old bandage, uncovering an oozing infection beneath. I felt woozy, unsteady from this discovery. I’ll be honest: my first instinct wasn’t to clean out the wound; it was to slap the bandage back on the wound and pretend I never saw it.

I can only describe my post-trip state as a “hot mess.” There was an unidentifiable ache pulsating from deep within the recesses of my soul. I had trouble focusing on basic things, and yet I attempted to ignore the rumbling feelings in the core of my being. As I tried to sleep that first night back, I watched the minutes of the clock tick by as my eyes began to leak. Finally, I relented. I went into the living room where my husband was working and asked, “Can we talk?” I surprised myself by saying, “I’m not sure how the pieces of my life fit together. The people, the seasons—they all feel so disconnected. It’s like I’ve lived so many different lives. How do they fit together?”

We ended up talking for several hours that night. After my husband fell asleep, I poured my heart out to Jesus. I was still praying when the image of fabric torn into ragged pieces appeared in my mind’s eye. Someone picked up the pieces and began skillfully, beautifully sewing them together. I heard the voice of my Savior saying, “I am the thread that binds all the pieces of your life together.”

While other characters in my story have faded in and out (some stormed out, some were thrust to the forefront), Jesus was the sure and steady constant. He was the one making sense where none could be found. Before I knew it, I could see a beautiful quilt. A masterpiece. The rough edges had been made smooth. There was a place for everything. My grandmother would have been proud.

Maybe some of the seasons of your life have been dark and painful. Maybe if we were to look beneath the bandages covering your wounded heart, we’d find infection in those wounds of yours too. Maybe the characters in your story have been unsavory or unsteady. Maybe the edges of the fabric feel too tattered to piece together. Maybe you aren’t sure what you’re supposed to do with all that.

May I gently invite you to let the master quilter do his work? Let him bind together the pieces of your life. Let him make beautiful what you assumed would always be only chaos, waste. Let him clean out the wounds.

Before your life began, your heavenly Father was already saying, “I’ll get started on the quilt.”

Stacey Philpot is wife to Ryan and mother to Hayden, Julie, and Avery. She is a writer, goofball, and avid reader. Stacey has ministered for over 15 years to youth and women in her community in order to equip them to go deeper in Christ. She blogs at aliferepaired.com and chronicallywhole.com.

Photograph © Bethany Beams, used with permission