August 24: Quilts

I am a thinker. I can take a subject like relationships and twist them round and round like a Rubik's cube...that sometimes comes out jumbled and needs to be tossed aside.

Today, I was thinking about our lives and how many others we touch in the span of a lifetime. 

The majority of the people in our world are optional. We have a limited time in our youth and then we can leave home and childhood behind. College is 4 years. We can change jobs. Heck, you can even vary where you buy groceries if you don't want the check-out clerk to judge your wine and frozen pizza purchases.

Our family....it's permanent. Even if you leave your childhood home and never look back. Your family has a hold on you in ways no one else ever will. They teach us our value. They affirm we are worth loving. They grace us with invincibility or fragility from others perceptions and judgments of us. They create our foundation. 

I see people carry out painful stories from their childhoods again and again through adulthood. It's powerful what we are told and shown from the womb forward. It's itnerlaced into our daily bread living even when we aren't aware of its power over us.

Interlacing made me think about quilts. How my life is such a patchwork quilt. We have all these little snippets that are the sum of our experiences.

Some are stunning, and truly we'd be blessed if we had a tangible reminder of them. Others make us grieve again and again whenever we bring them to the present via memory.

Hiding under an old bush and staring up at Orion wishing I could be elsewhere. That one moment in the Shenandoah mountains when the sun broke over the ridge and I felt God. Walking onto the stage at King Chapel at Cornell and singing to receive a scholarship (and nailing it!). The vivid red roses in my wedding bouquet and feeling more beautiful than I knew was possible as an entire chapel filled with loved ones turned to greet me with love. A hug that felt like a home every time I stepped into it. Holding Aria in my arms for the first time. Saying goodbye to my grandpa in hospice. 

A million fragments of bliss and beauty and sorrow. My life is snippets. Tiny patches in a glorious quilt.

Coldplay - The Scientist