Lesson from a Broken Thread

I am teaching Sasha and Nina how to embroider. They came with their mother to the craft class a couple of times and I realized right away that learning how to do patchwork was beyond both of them at this time. Sasha, just turned 13 years old, might find it interesting – but I didn’t think so after watching her reactions the first time. Nina, 6 years old, was totally bored by the whole idea. Both girls sat quietly beside their mother most of the time. I gave them notebooks to draw and color in. Jim Rayburn, founder of Young Life, is known for his phrase, “It’s a sin to bore a kid with the Gospel” and that kept going through my mind. I think it is also wrong to make a kid think Christians and Christianity as a whole are boring. I thought to myself, what can I do, what can I teach these girls to do with their hands and mind, so they, too, can be a part of our craft group? I thought of all the embroidery supplies I had upstairs in our flat.

My mother taught me to embroider when I was very young, maybe 5 or 6 years old, so I knew Nina is not too young. I wondered if Sasha would enjoy it – teenagers here are very different in some ways than teens in the States, and I cannot always predict how they will respond to new ideas. Both of the girls were thrilled with the idea. The first attempt was a small disaster because the transfer pattern I tried to use was too old and didn’t work well. The cloth was also too thin. The following week I had better cloth and a newer transfer and voila! Both girls took off, with needle and floss. It was simple to show them the very basic stitch. Sasha took hers home to work on, Nina got tired after about 15 minutes and put it away in the cupboard.

This week Sasha brought hers back and I’m very impressed. Her mother bought her some thread, not regular DMC floss, but more like a thin needlepoint yarn. It works well, and the great news is that they bought it themselves. Part of what we hope to do is encourage less dependence on us and our money supplying everything all the time. Even though this family is poorer than you can imagine, the mother scrapped enough together to buy this inexpensive thread for her daughters. I rejoice! Sasha has taken to embroidery with a passion. I think she has some real talent that if developed, will give her pleasure and feelings of accomplishment for years to come. My hope that she will also use that ability to glorify God.

Nina came in and immediately got out her embroidery. I put the cloth in the hoop I bring just for her and got her all set up to do the next section of the turtle she is working on. I had to show her again how to do the basic stitch. All perfectly normal when working with an active 6 year old. She sat down beside her mama and started working away industriously on her project. I helped her through two or three endings of lines and restarting at new places. Her embroidery is young – large stitches, uneven in length, but she follows the line very well. She has potential. Of course she gets bored quickly, I expect that. Six year olds are not usually known for long attention spans.

Toward the end of our time together, Nina handed her project to me across the table and asked me what to do next. We have an unusual way of communicating because we talk in very simple Russian with a lot of hand motions and facial expressions (my language skills are so poor….sigh). I looked at her project and thought to myself, “Hmm – this is interesting, what in the world has she done here?” As I was examining the end of the line and trying to figure out how to fix what she had done, I noticed that about two inches farther back the thread had been broken. I use facial expressions a lot with kids, so I looked up at her in exaggerated surprise and asked simply – “what happened here?!” Nina very nonchalantly replied something and her mother reprimanded her. She then explained very earnestly to her mama that she had sewn the extra cloth at the side to the back of the turtle and when she realized it, she just cut the thread and released the cloth. I was laughing inside, I can’t help it. Now you have to realize that I did NOT understand 100% of the words that were being said between mother and daughter, but I did understand what was going on. Mama asked her why, she explained, then mama told her don’t do that again, and look, Cindie has to fix it now, and so forth and so on. I decided at that point it was better not to make her take it all out (my mother would have insisted with me!), so I used the extra thread on the needle and kind of tacked down the two loose ends with several small stitches. The piece will always have an unusual look there, and maybe even a hole in the line in the future, but that’s the way it is. When I finished, she took her project and put it away in the cupboard.

I thought about that incident while I was going to sleep last night. How like Nina I am. I live my life, going along fine I think, and suddenly I realize that something is wrong. So, instead of taking it to the Lord and asking Him what I should do, I just “fix it” on my own. I am so thankful that the Lord doesn’t give up on me when He sees all of my mistakes. The beautiful, uneventful even line of my life has many places in it that have been tacked down, repaired, made ok or even more beautiful than ever because God has “repaired” them. He has the lines of my life laid out before me, and I walk in them – not perfectly, sometimes with tiny stitches, other times with huge ones, and occasionally breaks that need repaired. But my God is so wonderful, so powerful, that He takes those ugly places, disaster places, hopeless places of my life and works them into the pattern of my life beautifully. In fact, the line and the pattern are more beautiful now than they would have been because He has repaired them.

I know, O Lord, that a man’s life is not his own;
It is not for man to direct his steps.
Correct me, Lord, but only with justice –
Not in your anger,
Lest you reduce me to nothing.
Jeremiah 10:23, 24

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him,
who have been called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28