Work with your Hands
Rhythms of Renewal: Create Rhythm - Work with your Hands
Somewhere in our basement is a tiny painstakingly hand-created patchwork quilt. Each square is perhaps half an inch across. When I was growing up, I loved to make things for my dolls, and so I took it upon myself to make a quilt for one of their beds with all the scraps of cloth my aunt had given me to use. I never quite finished it, but I enjoyed every stitch and took infinite pleasure in anticipating its completion. There’s also a knitted red, green, purple, yellow, and blue beginning of a patchwork blanket that my younger sister and I worked on together, each knitting squares for it and then sewing them together. Our ambition was to make it big enough for both of us to snuggle under while we watched a movie. At its current (and most likely forevermore) size, it could probably cover one or two people's feet.
On a couple of different walls in our house are framed counted cross-stitch embroideries that I did when time allowed for that type of leisure activity. They are detailed and beautiful, and I remember the many hours that went into them with tender affection. “To everything there is a season,” reads one of them, with a scene from each of the four seasons below it. As I admire my handiwork, I try to remember the truth of that passage in Ecclesiastes in my own reality, as the demands of family and work rarely allow me time now to indulge in that particular tranquil pastime.
That Bible passage reminds me that in my younger days I did have more time to “fritter” away on crafts and projects like that. But as I read this chapter on working with your hands, it reminded me that it’s still important to find time for these types of pleasures. “Using our hands, employing our God-given creativity to make something new, is good medicine for the soul” (247). I wholeheartedly agree with that statement Rebekah Lyons pronounces in this chapter.
Maybe counted cross-stitch is a habit that’s calling me to make the time to take up again. I have always loved to create things: working on latch hook rugs, creating stationery, and knitting dishcloths. My daughters are currently in a sewing class on Mondays, and both of them really enjoy it. I wasn’t sure if my tomboyish older daughter (age 15) would like it, but I knew without a doubt that my 12-year-old would. I have been delighted that they both really enjoy the projects they are working on and making. Watching their enjoyment and pride in creating something triggers something in my heart to embrace those hobbies again.
Although I try to read every chapter in this book with an open mind and heart, sometimes I find that the adventurous and daring part of me that wants to implement the ideas I’m reading gets into an argument with the practical side of me that loudly proclaims and repeatedly reminds myself that there are only so many hours in a day, and “this” should not be the way that I spend them. If I really took all these wonderful, beautiful, and valid suggestions in this book and made them a part of my routines, I’m afraid that laundry would pile up, groceries would disappear and not be replenished, meals wouldn’t get made, and so forth. Perhaps the reminder on my wall that “There is a season for everything” may have to help me prioritize my choices right now.
Do you find that you’ve gone through different seasons in your life, too, with using your hands for creating beauty and not just keeping up with the basic chores of life? Perhaps starting with baby steps and small beginnings can help us incorporate healthy rhythms back into our lives without resulting in the collapse of some positive current trends. We all have to work out how that looks in our own rhythms individually.
