Resilience: After eating together, Dreamer and I update the blank book we use as a gratitude journal. As we verbalize and record the day’s visitations of grace, our threadbare souls experience modest repair.
We are coping with holes in our lives. Sometimes we feel worn as ancient parchment: our moods uneven, our hopes brittle and thoughts torn.
Back in medieval times, a parchment maker’s knife often slipped while smoothing animal hides for the written word, leaving behind small gouges and tears.
Frugal scribes threaded needles, then zigzagged back and forth, bridging the gap. They redeemed a deficiency with color and texture (see image here).
Raw edges were sometimes sutured, like a heart patient after a bypass.
A gash might be darned, like a sock. Or latticed with parchment strips.
Mid-page in a gospel or treatise, repairs might resemble a doily or dreamcatcher (see image).
Rather than discard the parchment or try to disguise the flaw, patient hands beautified the damage.
Defect as Art.
No matter how riven or riddled we feel, the Living Word keeps tossing us lifelines . . . for every gap, every absence, each gaping wound.
Sturdy, vivid, resilient — grace (and gratitude) mend us.
Let’s embrace each strand, no matter how small:
when we sleep, or kneel, when we mourn with a friend,
reset the mousetraps, scour the sinks,
mask up (or not), re-brush the dog,
make lists, make love, make sincere amends,
recycle, pay bills, exercise,
tithe, take the stairs, sanitize hands,
binge, commute, argue, pray,
zoom, google, sing in the shower,
cha-cha, chop onions, shop online,
change diapers, change lanes,
send faxes, do taxes . . .
Thank God, there’s always one more holy, holistic way to practice resilience.
Where are you torn, and how will you treat the hurt place today?
You might also like “Holes and Holiness”
Here, a scribe leveraged three page holes to create a laughing face.
FROM THE ARCHIVES: You might also enjoy Crossing the Gap
Hands and thread photo Conor O’nolan on Unsplash.
“grace (and gratitude) mend us.”
Thank you.
Oh, good words for me to re-read today. Thank you for highlighting them, Rick. : > )
Something Gerald May wrote has stuck with me for years in my work with people in addiction. Was reminded of it reading your post…
“We’re born addicted.
We live by mending.
The grace of God is glue.”
We all can identify with that.
I like to sometimes ‘reword’ it this way…
“We’re born wounded.
We live by mending.
The grace of God is glue.”
Both versions feel hopeful. And I like your version best.
I stand corrected.
Quote was not Gerald My but Eugene O’Neal.
Oh, Laurie, this is a wondrously woven piece of parchment for our hurting hearts! You’ve tapped into the very spiritual characteristic that seems to be desperately lacking in me. My endurance needs embroidering to make it strong and beautiful on the journey. Any perseverance I possess requires a picking up of several stitches that have dropped. And all patience has become tested into threadbareness, ragged at the edges.
The fabric of my life is being torn into shreds by unavoidable busyness resulting in excessive fatigue, anxiety and stress. But this… this lovely heartwarming word for the weary is a timely reminder to trust God to heal what is broken, darn my deficiencies, and suture where I am weak. Thank you for being a faithful mouthpiece for Him. I’m so glad I stopped by to read these words that need to be returned to, absorbed and assimilated like the finest art work. Sending blessings, love and grateful hugs. xo ?
Joy, how wonderful to hear from you. Yesterday, during my run, you were strongly on my mind and in my prayers. I wondered how you were faring amid the wearing demands of constant decisions, large and small, day after day, along with all the attendant upheaval. Chaos is so taxing!
That you found words and images here to warm and encourage you feels like a partial answer to that prayer.
Also: the broideries of grace (to use the charming if archaic word) already worked so deftly into your life and writings over the years are beautiful to this beholder.
Oh Laurie. Huge gulp of fresh air- of LIFE this week! Thank you. I’ve been sitting with these words the past few days and they keep going deeper… His words through you have been in and of themselves “one more holy and holistic way to practice resilience” in my life. In so many lives!
(God’s gorgeous grace further proving this point: Ellie, who turns 5 this week, was downstairs singing I Love You Lord at the top of her beautiful voice as I opened your blog to read it the first time)
?
This entry’s R words brought back to mind so vividly your oh-so-timely entry from June of 2019. The powerful picture of His patient hands beautifying the damage- reshaping us…
repairing, redeeming, renewing,
(re)making resilient
our raw, riven, riddled souls.
Thanking the Lord for you today, for the ways He weaves us into each other’s lives as part of that beautiful mending!
Happy birthday to Ellie! Oh, to have eavesdropped on her singing! Thank you for telling me about that sweet moment. : >)
I’m grateful the post feels timely. I needed to talk to myself about resiliency, and the fact that it also resonates with others underlines my desire to stay poised and ready—as needed—for incoming sutures.
And then, there’s this:
As I sit with these “R” words you mention, I imagine them as gifts lovingly tied with ribbons. Gifts freighted with (finite) risk and unlimited possibility. More than enough to stir this heart sing . . .
Blessings on you and your family!
Oh dear Laurie!
What a lovely piece you have created here.
So timely, so comforting, so inspiring at every level.
This is a masterpiece of our Covid era.
I’m inspired to get out my embroidery thread and create, to repair neglected and forgotten treasures along with my own needy heart.
Bless you sweet friend ❤
Dear Gail, having seen your paintings I’m not surprised to learn you embroider, too. : >)
I’m so glad the post resonated with you.
When I was young, my clever mama allowed me extra tv time if I also worked on my knitting or embroidery. How we need one another to reinforce neglected places gone thready and spare in our souls and minds. Pull out the floss! Tighten the hoop!
The first time I read this, I read “leaving small tears… “
As TEARS that flow from a heart that weeps. I guess that connotation fits the text as well. This is another of your blogs, dear Laurie,that I will read and read and read ..Absorbing anew, each time.
With gratitude and grace, new stitches to strengthen the threadbare places. Thank you once again.
I just had an image of the many hurting hearts that are resutured from your writings.
Judy, thank you. Your words remind me I once ended a favorite poem with the line “Suture what you can.” Which is something I’ve seen you do, again and again. May we thread the needle a-fresh today . . .
Much needed my friend ?
By myself as well, Patti, amid the grueling ongoing wear and tear of our times. And this passage of life. The lil blue heart speaks volumes. Today, may delight knock at your door . . .
How fun to think that God allows us to repurpose the tears in our lives to make beauty, and possibly even humor!
Holes can be a good thing! Like in bread or in swiss cheese. LOL!
Love your perspective.
Oh Deanna, yes, it is good news, isn’t it. The Best. And we could all use the good medicine of laughter as well.
And your talk about texture: Now you’re making my mouth water . . . :>)
Laurie,
I’m always grateful for your fresh perspective. What a great reminder to see the beauty in the tears of life. I love the way you see God’s hand in the ordinary things of life. What a gift to all of us, your readers! Much Love, Linda
Linda, what a great pleasure to hear from you. It makes that part of me that has missed your outlook and candor and exuberant laugh and clear soprano and thoughtful questions and refreshing company surge, all over again. Hope you and your dear family are thriving. Love you, Laurie
Your stunning imagery, Laurie, brought to mind my mother, one of the most resilient people I’ve ever known. She not only endured but overcame a number of traumas in her young life, no doubt the result of her strong faith and positive attitude. Together those two elements combined to preserve her from any ill effects. The defects of her childhood and youth were indeed sutured into a beautiful masterpiece by the Master Craftsman himself (Ephesians 2:10).
Dear Nancy, how lovely to read this tribute to your mother. Thank you. She sounds like a woman I would have enjoyed meeting, sharing coffee and conversation, hearing part of her story. I’m grateful to be reminded of the Ephesians verse today, thank you! Here’s to God’s ongoing handiwork within us!
Just a simple thank you for your grace-filled words and images. With love…
Love you, Pacia. Thank you for sitting with these words images today.
Loved this: a visual to creating beauty out of trauma and trial. Thank you, Laurie, I needed to see this today!
Dear Linda Jo, may Beauty infuse you each hour today. Amen
Resilience ~ this grace in which we stand, which often feels like feet soaking in hot springs of grace ~ therapeutic and tempering the brittle to compliant resilience again. I so relate to the process. Thank you for this exceptional parchment of grace for the places that are weary and torn, Laurie.
Ahhhh. My insteps tingle at the thought. Thank you, Nancy. 🙂
I might dig out the Epsom salts and improvise a foot bath , , .
Two thoughts come to mind when reading this…
A quote and a psalm:
Gearld May wrote,
“We’re born addicted.
We live by mending.
The grace of God is glue.”
Sometimes I change “addicted” to “wounded.”
They both work.
The psalmist said,
“He heals the brokenhearted
And binds up their [a]wounds.”
(147:3)
Thank you for the added stitch today.
Oh, such potent words. You make me want to revisit May’s writing again. And those tender words from the psalmist—so consoling. Thank you, Rick.