Third Person Thursday

Back in December she won a raffle for a handmade quilt.

She emailed the quilt maker with some colors that she liked and told the quilter to surprise her with the end result. Every few weeks the quilter would send an email updating her on the progress, until last week the quilter told her it was in the mail.

When she opened the package, her breath was taken away. The quilt was gorgeous. The colors were perfect. The size was perfect for snuggling up in on a rainy (or not so rainy) day. The thickness and weight were exactly what she wanted. If she had been there in person, picking out fabrics and laying out the pattern, it could not have been more perfect. (In fact, it probably would have been worse as she tends to get overwhelmed with color choices and design schemes and so forth.)

It reminded her of another perfect quilt that is no longer with her. That quilt was made by her grandmother. It was a crazy patchwork, with no rhyme or reason to the color or fabric selection. It was on her bed from the time she was 13 until the time it was lost in a move at the age of 22. She wept over the loss of that quilt. She knows it seems silly, crying over a quilt, especially one that was starting to get worn and threadbare with use. But she doesn't care. In the eleven years since it went missing, no other blanket has ever felt as good as that quilt did.

She knows that quilts are often used as metaphors when people are speaking of feeling the Holy Spirit at work in your life; warm, enveloping, conforting. It's a good metaphor, she thinks. The arrival of this new perfect quilt just happened to coincide with some crazy deep soul searching she had been doing. She thinks she'll spend some time wrapped up in love, just as she did so many years before.

Third Person Thursday

Tip 'o the hat to Kage for the format idea.

She knows this time of the year is the winter doldrums, so she tried to compensate by keeping her home tidy(ish) and cozy, cooking pots of hearty soups and the occasional yummy dessert and looking forward to spring and sunshine, which isn't too far away.

But just like clockwork, the moody blues hit with a vengeance. She's tired and worn out from dealing with the flu on top of life. She knows her partner is also tired and worn out and worst in his mind, COLD. (He doesn't like being cold.) She's trying to be supportive, but the energy battery is already running so low in spite of the extra rest and vitamins and cutting out the unimportant to focus on what matters Right Now. She realized today that not only is it a full moon this week, but her monthly visitor would be arriving sometime on Sunday. (She knows this thanks to the miracle of modern science).

In other words, Mother Nature is really, really messing her up.

She's been worrying about her girls, too. She remembers those awkward tween/pre-teen/teen years all to well. At times she sees the girls handling challenges with grace and maturity that belies their ages. And then sometimes they're a weeping mess that can't be fixed, only endured. She remembers what it was like and digs deep in her muddled soul so she can listen or talk or provide a solution- whatever is necessary. And then there was yesterday when there was nothing she could say, and the consequences (if any) would fall directly - and painfully - on her precious girl's head.

And then there's reality smacking her straight upside the head, with another sick girl. It didn't seem serious at first, but it's getting worse. The doctor wants to wait until tomorrow to how things stand then. The last time she waited her baby girl ended up with pneumonia. But she decides to trust the doctor, because the alternative (a middle of the night trip to the scary, takes-eight-hours-to-be-seen-and-who-knows-what-germs-are-now-taking-over-her-body emergency room) is worse than waiting.

And while she's busy dealing with the day-to-day stuff, living life, enduring to the end, what she REALLY wants to be doing is thinking deep thoughts about long term decisions and implications and ramifications. For her. For her partner. For her girls. For their family. For their friends. She wants to write out her concerns and frustrations and her goals and dreams. But she's afraid people won't be kind or understanding or worse; like they will judge her feelings and willfully misunderstand her choices. Because it's happened before, and it wasn't pretty. It never is.

Her body will heal. So will her mind and soul. Mother Nature will be kind again soon. She'll worry in the meantime but then, when the time is right, when the universe shows itself, she'll act. She knows life is messy and lovely. She's got the dichotomy down and she understands that juxtaposing some things will make people mighty uncomfortable. So she waits a bit longer, biding her time. Pondering. Praying. Revising. Reviewing. Waiting.