A Sweet Hobby

I remember the day, around 1962, when my mother came into this very living room and sat beside me on the sofa making me turn off the TV.  I was not pleased.  She had a sampler she had sewn when she was a child.  Why she would think I, her wild pre teen would care, I don't know.  I still see it - a home made counted cross stitch design that said 'Search the Scriptures'.  Of all the lame things to say, mother asked me if I would like to make a sampler too.  I think she was in the mood to share something with her daughter and that was what she came up with.  In a burst of uncharacteristic cooperation, I said I would like that.

Mother got out a piece of fine muslin from her fabric box.  Together we used a pencil to mark Xs in the shape of words.  Mine said, 'Love One Another'.  I was given a hoop and red thread and set to work.  Mother and I had a great afternoon together, laughing and sharing.

And that was the start of one of my favorite hobbies.  I loved cross stitch.  And it didn't take me long to finish a piece.  When I was thirteen my Pioneer Girl leader announced that she had started a business - glory be, a sampler company!!  And it was just up the street.  My father drove me over and I thought I would faint from the joy of it.  A warehouse full of printed cross stitch kits.  I chose two and remember that they cost about $3 each.  They were finished within two weeks.  He took me back.  And I picked the biggest, hardest one there - St. Francis of Assisi Prayer, 16x20, half inch letters.  It took a year off and on.  It hung in my parent's house until I got married and it moved to my house.  I have no idea where it is now.  Then I did an alphabet sampler with a flower for every letter.  My daughter has that one.  In my thirties, depressed, overwhelmed, my father knew just what would perk me up.  He bought me a crewel kit of a Hummel child thinking it would give me encouragement.  That was followed by three more Hummels.  In the following years I would take a piece of muslin or lawn and draw a picture or a poem and just free lance it.  I carried a 5x7 square of aida cloth with me at all times and would sooth my social anxiety by doing poems and Bible verses.  I can see myself, my busy hands on my lap, weaving the needle in and out, while trying to look like I was listening.

And then I stopped.  Never picked up the needle again.  I think life got too busy and overwhelming for hobbies.  When the girls were here last summer and we went through the cedar chest, they exclaimed over the many needlework pieces, almost fifty, that were stored there.  When they went home, I couldn't get embroidery out of my mind.  So I went out and bought a large length of aida cloth and looked up some counted cross stitch patterns online (something my mother didn't have).  And started to stitch.  And stitch.  And stitch.  Pictures and words and alphabets.  I have a quilt made of embroidered Bible verses, 14 samplers of all kinds.  Just started #15.  I love going to Michael's and ruminating over thread colors.  So many more than I had in 1965.  What am I going to do with them?  Nothing.  Roll them up in a tube and when I'm dead my girls will find them and say, "What the heck?"  Or maybe they'll value them as I did my mother's work.

I know that at some point, like Forrest Gump, I'm going to be done and just stop.  I only have one piece of aida left so maybe the time is coming.  How sad.  But until then, I'm having a ball.  Thanks Mom.

The Impossible Hand of Understanding

Corrie Ten Boom was a Dutch christian, an ordinary person, in an ordinary family, strong papa, dear mama, loving sisters.  Their lives were flowing by with nothing of any great importance happening.  And Corrie had every reason to believe she would reach the end of her life having lived a quiet, humble life.  Then World War 2 happened and the Nazis swept into Holland and occupied it, dispatching the Jews and anyone who aided them.  The quiet life ended.  Corrie joined the underground, at age 45, and her family ended up hiding Jews in a secret space in their home.  One of those women became so frightened she left the hiding place and made it known to one of the boy soldiers in their neighborhood.  He was their childhood friend.  And he gave them up.  The family was arrested, thrown into a train with the town's Jews, and landed at Auschwitz.  Papa, Mama, sisters, brother, nieces, nephews - all were sent to the ovens upon arrival.  Only Corrie and her sister Betsy survived to go through events that even a horror writer's imagination couldn't conceive.  Betsy died two years later, and Corrie survived until rescued by the Americans.  She went on, for the rest of her life, as a speaker, healer, recounter of the Holocaust from her perspective as a Christian.

This is one of the stories she tells in her book, The Hiding Place.  She was speaking at a meeting in America, four years after the war, telling her story.  Urging the audience to forgive as God forgives us, not to hold hatred or grudges against the wicked, but to seek to bring them back from their darkness.  When she was finished, a handsome young man came up to her and in a German accent told her this - he had been a guard at Auschwitz and had done evil.  After the war he had come across some Christians who had ministered to him and he had completely repented and changed his life.  He put out his hand and said, "I would like to ask your forgiveness and shake your hand as a brother in Christ."  Corrie looked closer.  She saw that he was indeed one of the guards who had beaten her sister and taken pleasure in the inmate's pain.  Corrie was paralyzed.  She felt hatred well up, pictures of the vile things he had done to her and her sister.  She had visions of revenge.  She most certainly was not going to shake his hand as if nothing had happened.  And then, a strange thing happened.  She thought, "God I can't shake his hand.  If you want to, fine, but I won't."  And with that, without any conscious motion on her part, her arm rose, her hand went out, the man took it and burst into tears.  "Please, please, forgive me!" he begged.  Corrie said everything changed.  The coldness broke open and she embraced him as a brother.

This week, two young men, ordinary boys, living ordinary lives, friends, parents, extended family, education, a wife and child came to a boundary.  They could choose this way or that way.  One way to a constructive life, the other to destruction.  For whatever reason, they chose destruction.  Six months ago, a young boy, mentally ill, consumed by video games, executed 26 children in a school.  He too had a choice at some point in his life, as did his parents, and he too chose the way of death instead of life.

We're supposed to hate them.   I know what I think 'they' should do to them.  I know what popular knowledge says should happen.  But I just can't.  Not because they aren't evil, and deadly, because they are and the events they caused are going down in history as holocausts.  I don't take that lightly.  But I don't want to be the person who hates, or judges.  I can't carry that around with me.  On a smaller scale, I've been a criminal, making the choice to do the destructive thing, stepping over that boundary with terrible consequences for someone else.  And along with the regret I will always carry, I can't also carry the burden of knowing I'm not forgiven even though I've repented.

So I do the motion.  I put my hand out.  And hope the emotion follows.