At the beginning of the project, I sat with the dress and all the other fabric laid out in front of me, envisioning the final product and making a plan on how to get there. Once I sketched it out and knew what was needed, I set about deconstructing the dress. My girls kept saying, "You're going to cut up this beautiful dress?!!" And while it was true I was going to cut it up, first I needed a tool other than scissors. I needed this...
We turned on a show and I started picking stitches with my trusty, small seam-ripper. When the show was done, the girls wanted to know why the dress wasn't cut up yet. "Mom, did you get distracted by the show?!"
I was quite pleased with my progress as I had separated the bodice and the lining and made the skirt lay open. Apparently, they were expecting quilt pieces to already be cut. I tried to explain the steps I needed to do first and they quickly said, "That's a lot of steps. Can we go play?!" I had to chuckle at the truth in their comment. It was a lot of admittedly tedious steps. And while removing a stitch at a time seemed so tiny to them, each one felt like a major stride in the project. The stitches gave the dress its form and each one I took away was a step toward allowing that form to change. Yet, taking them out one by one also ensured the material was usable for a new purpose.
We are not unlike a sewing project. Each person walking this earth has experiences in life that become the narratives that drive us. These narratives (or stitches, if you will) become the way we view life, relationships, parenting, success, failure, and the Lord. These stitches help form us.
Our stitches are made by the family that raised us, the way we were educated, the country we live in, the jobs we have held, and the experiences life has brought us. For better or worse, all of these help to form us. Some will speak life and truth over our lives and some will plant doubts, falsehoods, and lies. In my experience, some stitches are more fundamental than others. Like the dress, the stitches holding the lining to the dress were less pivotal than the stitches constructing the bodice. The impact of having or removing each was vastly different.
In my opinion, the stitches we hold about who God is are fundamental--the bodice of our lives. We all have different impressions and experiences with God. We all heard about him the first time in a different way. Perhaps by a relative who we only saw once a year but always said "Jesus loves you, and so do I." Maybe it was Vacation Bible School as a kid, or a summer camp?! Maybe you learned of God as a small child having attended church since you were a newborn. Maybe you never heard about God until you were older. Maybe as an adult, we still view him through our child eyes. It wasn't wrong the way we saw him as a child but our view of him hasn't grown and there is a vastness of God we need to see more fully. And what's more, some of our exposures accurately reflect God's true nature and some do not. Nevertheless, these stitches help form us.
God takes his proverbial seam ripper to gently undo these false narratives one stitch at a time. For a while, we can still see the stitch marks but over time, they smooth out and are no longer discernible--the old narrative has been replaced with TRUTH. The process takes various lengths of time but every step of the process is God working to make us new. This is the process of sanctification. Remember the bridesmaids dress? It wasn't huge cuts that transformed it, but taking out the stitches one by one to completely alter the form it once held, while also not destroying it.
I get so frustrated with myself when I fall back into old habits or false beliefs about who God is. Like thinking he is an ominous father that is looking for me to mess up so he can reprimand me. Or that there is a list of things I need to check off daily to be loved by God. Or that having the normal range of human emotions means I don't have enough faith. Or that struggling with anxiety and depression means I'm a bad believer. Or that not having the same convictions as other believers means I am not hearing God. Or here is a big one: when I glean a new level of understanding about a passage in the bible and feel so dumb for not having understood it previously. Each of these is a stitch God has removed; and sometimes I focus on the old stitch holes still visible in my fabric rather than the new form God is creating.
The process is hard--how many conversations do we have in our marriages or with our kids that employ old habits that aren't working. But each time we notice, correct, and step back just a little bit sooner, this is success. This is continuing to try. This is the sanctifying work of the Lord. I heard somewhere that people don't respond to situations based on what is happening now but based on their experiences preceding the current situation. So when I react to what is occurring before me, it is more a result of my stitches acting as a lens in viewing this situation. When I can surrender to the new form God is creating, and let go of those stitch marks, the way I react to situations inherently will change, too.
The reality of the cross is that without it, I was dead from sin. Jesus' death paid a price I could never pay so God would see me as righteous. Acknowledging this is monumental in the life of each believer. And God loves us too much to have that be the end. We can come to him as a decade old bridesmaids dress, tattered rags, or anything in between and trust that we are LOVED and Jesus died for us. And we can know that God wants to make something new. He has a process and his seamripper is hard and better than that, He knows exactly when and how to remove our stitches so we will not be destroyed but rather prepared for our new form.
PS-Speaking of stitches that formed us, the show "Friends" was HUGE when I was in high school and college. In writing this post, I couldn't help but hear the line from the pilot episode "What if your whole life everyone's been telling you 'you're a shoe, you're a shoe, you're a shoe.' What if I don't want to be a shoe. Maybe I want to be a purse, or a hat?! No, I don't want you to buy me a hat, I'm saying that I am a hat! It's a metaphor!!" Here's to the sanctifying power of the Lord making each of us into a new quilt, hat, purse, or shoe.
