Completed Cross-Stitch

2 Corinthians 4:16-18 says,

¹⁶So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self^[d] is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. ¹⁷For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, ¹⁸as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

I couldn’t help but think of this verse as I worked on and completed my first very big cross stitch project. I have done some sewing in the past, but I usually gave up before I finished, or tucked it away never to be taken out again.

But in March of 2020, as we watched the world shut down due to a global pandemic, and in June of 2020 as I watched footage of people vandalizing my husband’s police cruiser (and much worse), I knew I needed something to do that didn’t involve a screen. And, honestly, books felt too hard. So I pulled out this cross stitch that I had ordered years before. I started in the top left corner and just….kept going. And going. And going.

I wondered if I could finish it by the end of the summer before we returned to school in August 2020, but as August approached I realized that was not going to happen. Still, I worked on it, placing stitches almost every single day of 2020. I stitched while Theo worked evening shift and I needed to keep my mind off it. I stitched while the kids played in the backyard. I stitched on road trips and ladies weekends and all through the long, long winter.

Honestly, as one person on my Instagram pointed out to me- sometimes it is so nice to stab a needle into something repeatedly a million times. So maybe that is why I kept on stitching. Or maybe it felt so comfortable to me that even in the midst of pandemics and horrible situations at my husband’s job and overwhelming situations at my job, I still had my sewing. And even though I was incredibly slow, it was something that I was slowly but surely accomplishing, one tiny stitch at a time.

In the Spring of 2021, I was about 3/4 of the way through my project. I walked into my bedroom to pick it up and found this:

I was nearly hysterical because there is no way I could keep going without the pattern to follow! I hopped online and couldn’t find the kit where I had ordered it from. I googled the website and found it, but everything was in a foreign language and I had no idea how to make sense of what I was reading or how to order another one. I finally found a spot and ordered an entire replacement kit, while also sending off an email to the company with my plight. I asked for a new pattern only, but didn’t hear back from them.

Finally, a few days later, the company responded to my email and had attached a PDF with the pattern- for free! I was so, so thankful. Theo printed it off and I was able to get right back to work. Phew.

I even worked on the cross stitch when I had COVID. I’m telling you…it was so therapeutic when I needed something fairly mindless. I was counting and dropping stitches, but it also allowed me to sit and just process and think about so many things. Almost like organizing the colors on the pattern helped to organize the thoughts that were jumbled up in my brain.

Finally, in July of 2021, I finished the entire cross-stitch. I have no idea how many hours I put into this thing, but it was probably somewhere around 300.

But, honestly, one of my favorite parts of the completed cross stitch was seeing the back of it. Yes, the messy, knotty, thread-tangled back of the cross stitch.

I think that the back of this project is how I see my life. It barely, dimly makes sense. It looks SUPER messy and really doesn’t make much sense. It’s tangled and shredded and I can only vaguely see the outline of what it is supposed to be.

And isn’t that my life? Lord, this just does’t make sense. I’m a knotty, messy, dim reflection of what I would like to be.

But as the creator of this sewing project, and God as the creator of my life sees a different side. The completed side. The whole side. The side that is a masterpiece. I know that this side of heaven, I will only be able to see the messy and dim side of my own life. But what hope it gives me to know that just as 1 Corinthians 4 says, “the things that are unseen are eternal”.

I also thought this verse went well with my thoughts on this cross-stitch:

Isaiah 55: 8-9 says “”For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD.
‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts. ”

Oh, how much God knows that I do not! Oh, how rich is his perspective and and how blessed I will be if I live like I believe that!

Theo did the final step and got the cross-stitch framed so that Kiah can have it hanging in his room.