Quilting my life

I have recently gotten into quilting. It is amazing to see a little scrap of fabric turn into something real, something beautiful, something tangible. No matter how poorly I sew, the end product is actually quite nice. No matter what I do to the quilt, short of slashing it with a pair of scissors, it is turns out OK. My friend Benita comes around so often to give me pointers and to say to me "It might look better like this..." or "Have you thought of this...." She is amazingly helpful. It causes me to wonder, though--Are our lives like making a quilt? I am total crap at sewing--I can hardly sew a straight line to save my life. However, here I am, making these really pretty quilts. Some for me, but mostly for others. My 5 year old niece is not going to care if I her final product is perfect (which fortunately for me, she feels that way, because it definitely wasn't perfect!). She sees it as a part of me. So are we as humans that way--we start off as this little scrap of a person, and as a new year is sewn into our lives of experience, we grow, just a little bit. Then all those years start to grow together and connect. All of a sudden, you look back and see this thing that you have created, and wonder "Where did that come from!? I remember sewing each of these parts together, but how did it turn out to be so big and intricate?" Then you start to remember your flaws-- "Ugh... I didn't do that the right way..." or "what was I thinking?" And others just see the time, effort and energy that went into making your quilt. The stitching may be crooked, and the colors may not always clash, but the quilt that is my life will turn out OK in the end. It will be beautiful and valuable to someone, one day down the line.

Choose carefully
My good friend Dan and I were having a great chat the other day--he is so profound and I always leave our conversations with much to think about. The idea of every emotion we feel being a choice came up in the course of our conversation. I have long been a firm believer that every thing we feel--from love to hate to forgiveness is a conscious choice. We choose who we fall in love with (but attraction is different--I think attraction is a reaction, not a feeling), and we choose who we allow to hurt us and how deeply we allow them to hurt us. Everything we feel is a distinct choice.
Our conversation got me to thinking about the choice we make to love and how our society has romanticized that idea to the point where we don't take credit for this amazing thing called love, and if it does go belly up, we only shift blame. I am FIRST in line to admit to that. When a relationship of mine ended (a while ago now!) I was so angry with myself that I allowed myself to fall in love with someone who was so clearly contrary to what I needed (THANK YOU Benita for being so clearheaded for me!). But I chose to ignore the glaring character flaws because I chose to believe I was lucky to have him. (Whatever.)
At one point in our conversation, Dan and I came to the conclusion that when you decide on your life partner, you are choosing to love someone for the rest of your married life together--thick or thin, sickness and health, and all that comes with it. (At one point in time, I might have said for the rest of your life, but we all know that divorce is too much a reality to say that!) You have to be careful who you choose to fall in love with-- and you have to look at who that person has the potential to be. And if you see the potential of your mate, and still choose to love him or her, then you have to be committed to that. Unfortunately, not everyone values the choice to love someone forever, and keeps that commitment.
We also talked about forgiveness. I think that forgiveness is the hardest thing to decide to do. But, in my experience, deciding to forgive is the most important thing you can do. There was a person that hurt me and my family very deeply, and for years I was bitter, angry and unforgiving. Eventually I realized that I had to choose to forgive this person--even if I didn't feel it at first. Eventually, the feeling of forgiveness came.
I say that forgiveness is the most important decision you can make because it effects every choice you make--is it a choice that I can ever forgive if I need to?