The Pattern Maker

At thirty-one, I decided to learn to cross-stitch. I bought patterns on Etsy, grabbed supplies from Michael’s, watched one short YouTube video, and officially had a new hobby.

It’s a simple but surprisingly challenging hobby. Even with a pattern, sometimes I lose my place. I’ll be stitching happily, growing more distracted by Gilmore Girls in the background, the dogs barking, and the dryer beeping, when I’ll feel the sudden change in tension. Too much and I’ve knotted the thread. A quick slackness means the thread has ripped. I try to remedy errors when possible, but usually I have to slowly weave the delicate threads back through the fabric to the point where I can begin again.

Sometimes I perform perfectly, with even stitches and smooth, tangle-free thread. Each color is vivid, and beauty begins to emerge. But then I realize with crafty despair that I’ve miscounted the pattern and I’m one row too far to the left or right. I can try to modify the pattern, but that means adjusting everything around that block of stitches to accommodate my mistake. It’s too much work. It’s not what the pattern maker had in mind.

It’s not what my Pattern Maker had in mind, either.

I like control. I like it when things turn out the way I think they’re supposed to. I like them to look right, to fall in line with my plans. And life is funny like that. God is funny like that. When I try to hold too tightly to the threads of this life, I feel the tension, the subtle pull of too much or the sudden slackness of broken pieces.

But God? He knows.

He knew. He knew long before I would exist on this planet.

“For it was you who created my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I will praise you because I have been remarkably and wondrously made. Your works are wondrous, and I know this very well. My bones were not hidden from you when I was made in secret, when I was formed in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw me when I was formless; all my days were written in your book and planned before a single one of them began” (Psalm 139:13–16 CSB).

As a cross-stitcher, I love the image of God knitting me together, remarkably and wonderfully. He never needed to consult a pattern or redo what went wrong, because he created me as he intended me to be. His tension is perfect; his thread never tangles or tears.

Knowing how hard I try to go slow and take my time, yet still make constant mistakes, makes my awe and reverence for God greater still. And it makes me freeze in wonder as I think, What am I doing with my own pattern?

God already knows what my finished product will look like. He’s always known. He tells me constantly that I’m known to him.

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He tells me in that psalm.

He tells me in Ephesians 1:4–5 that he chose me before the foundation of the world, that I was meant to be adopted as his own.

He tells me in John 15:16 that it isn’t me who chose him, but him who chose me.

And way back in the Old Testament, he tells me in Jeremiah 29:11 that he knows the plans he has for me, plans for a future and for a hope.

So why do I find myself constantly trying to rethread my life with a different color of thread, or a different number of threads, or placing the stitches in the wrong spot? I don’t need to rewrite the pattern. It will never look as good as God designed it to be.

When I do it, it looks second place, or even worse. I fester. Trying to crisscross over what God’s already stitched and is planning to stitch? I create tangles and breaks, and the only thing left to fix it is to allow God to rip out all the junk. And trust me, it takes forever to rip out all that stuff. And once it’s ripped out, there’s a slight ripple in the fabric. The threads don’t sit just right. You can see the beauty in the finished project, but the less you have to rip, the better you let the pattern speak for itself, the more whole the finished piece is.

The less I attempt to modify God’s pattern, the more time I have to admire the beauty of it all.

Because the Pattern Maker knows what he’s doing.

Krista Wilbur lives in Southern California, where she’s spent nearly her whole life. She works at an administrator at her church. Krista loves bright colors, dogs, reading, cross stitching, and making new friends. Her first book, Four Letter Words, is available on Amazon.

Photograph © Alina Kuptsova, used with permission