Knitting

My kids giggle over my tendency to follow a trail of something. When I get bitten with interest or sense there is a reason why I am being called to attention, I'll pursue a topic, issue, hobby. Climbing Mt. Everest is one of my son's favorites.  Though most of my knowledge about climbing Mt. Everest is not immediately accessible in my brain, for a long time I could tell you all the details you needed to know if you were considering or preparing to climb.  Best possible time to increase your odds of reaching the summit, areas that were of unsuspecting risk, equipment, famous climbers, length and appropriate type of training to prepare for the climb ...and much, much more.  I never had any interest in climbing myself ...but should I suddenly develop the interest, I had all the information at the ready.  Same with whaling ...another topic I am teased about.  I think it was a way for my brain to remain fit while hanging with mostly little people for days on end.  There have been other areas I've explored too, but these are the one's my family likes to reflect on the most.
  Lately a theme keeps popping up.  Knitting.  I learned to knit around the age of eight.  My first completed project was a rust colored pocketbook that I fashioned myself.  It was the ugliest thing ...even then I thought so.  Over the years I've knit plenty of scarves, but never developed any talent much beyond that fairly simple project.  My girls knit too, and made themselves plenty of scarves for themselves and their dolls.  A knitting basket is always full in our house. It hasn't been touched in our house for a while, maybe a year.
  I don't spend much time on the computer ...I have a few sites I check regularly, but only for a few moments.  I don't spend a long time dissecting articles, following trails.  Two sites I visit a few times a week, sometimes daily, are by home schooling moms with several kids, striving to live their lives for God.  I get lots of inspiration from these women ...and their is an obvious connection between the two.  http://www.aholyexperience.com/ and http://ebeth.typepad.com/
They have a friend, who also blogs, who is terminal with cancer.  http://keeponspinning.wordpress.com/ I pray for this woman ... who seems to be quite extraordinary in many ways, with a tender, but enormous faith.  She knits.  She has children, she battles her illness, oversees her own children's physical hurdles ...and knits ....and teaches others to as well.  And now she has taught my two blogging mothers how to knit as well.  So knitting has become a bit of a theme for these blogs over the past several weeks.  Its been fun ...and simple to read about.  Though I enjoyed it, it didn't inspire me to pick up the needles and create. Coincidentally ...?....
One of my support group ladies handed me a book from the lending library.  "Have you read this?  I think you'd like it" Looking at the title, The Knitting Circle, by Anne Hood, I giggled saying "seems to be  all the rage these days ...knitting."  Later, with my book, I sit at my daughter's tennis lesson and next to me another friend sits, pulls out her knitting project.  Clackety clack ...someone's trying to tell me something.  I read the book and with every stitch they say 'I love you' to whomever.  The main character knits each stitch for her daughter ...who's died.  She knits to remember and she knits to forget.  She just knits and knits and knits ...and creates, re-creates her life. 
  The book begins just shy of her daughters sixth month anniversary, right where I am.  There is no mistake here ...this story coming into my life at this time.  Showing me the beauty a series of knots can create ...all sorts of beautiful things that can be shared.  Knots. Life has knots ....some really big, complicated knots ...just like knitting.  And these knots can be quite beautiful.  My big knot ...Phoebe's death, her suicide is very, very complicated ...and I don't like it one bit. But that doesn't mean that somehow, in this big twisted mess, life can't still be made beautiful.  God does that.  He takes the ugly, the unwanted, the mess ...and if we let Him, He will make it beautiful ....because He makes all things new.
All this knitting ....hasn't made me pick up the needles, but it has helped me see something, my life, my loss, in a different way ....a more beautiful, more hopeful way.

Eternal rest grant unto Phoebe and may perpetual light shine upon her.  May she rest in peace. Amen.