Authors Note: This is a guest post by my sister Kristi. She is a beautiful women of God who has learned how to walk in constant surrender to God’s design of her story. She inspires me!
I pulled the useless, colorful creation from the deep recesses of the box I was sorting through and burst into gales of laughter. I had immediately been transported back about 12 years to my days as an ambitious, crafty 9-year-old who loved starting creative projects, but rarely finished them.
This particular relic that I pulled from the box came from the phase when I especially enjoyed crocheting. I would find a ball of yarn from my mother’s collection and, with little forethought or planning, would dive into yet another project, anticipating the glorious artistry.
More often than not, due to my lack of planning and large amount of inexperience at the craft, I’d run out of yarn or accidentally gain stitches. What I imagined in my young mind to become a beautiful blanket ended up being no wider than several inches. Or the lovely dishrag I envisioned would suddenly resemble a triangle more than a square.
I remember many times taking my project to my mom, discouraged and frustrated with the outcome, wanting a listening ear to hear my woes, and eyes to watch as I’d throw the project into the garbage.
But she’d never let me throw my projects away.
“Oh, it’s beautiful!” She exclaimed when I complained about the ugliness.
“Perhaps you could use it as a scarf for your doll.” She suggested when my blanket had seemingly flopped.
Apparently, when I despairingly discarded the project, she rescued it and tucked it away in a box. Planning to show her grandkids someday, I suppose.
I pulled out several more of the rejected projects and laughed with disdain at their pitiful sights—all with seemingly no use or beauty in their strange shapes and mismatched yarn.
It was then that I was struck by the way my mom looked at them, seeing the beauty and value in each castaway.
For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. — 2 Corinthians 4:17
Recently God has been showing me how, in a similar way, He takes the parts of my story that seem to me to be useless, ugly, or irredeemable, and weaves them into the masterpiece of my life journey. It is easy for me, if I cannot see much immediate purpose in the experience, to write it off as an insignificant “extra” in my story.
Such as that time I prayed endlessly for a particular result that never showed up. The dream that never became reality. The random stranger that ducked into my life for a matter of moments. The intense and difficult semester at college. The agony over a lost soul with no immediate signs of redemption. The ugly mistake I made that certainly didn’t produce good things. The sudden turn of events from life as I know it—whether for the good or the bad.
“Hmm. That was random. What was God thinking when He allowed that?” I wonder, and then let the experience fade into the crevices of my memory. Like the useless, triangle washcloth, I throw it out and move on with life.
Yet, God is revealing to me that, while He may not always choose to immediately show me the purposes in what He allows, He’s not arbitrarily throwing little mis-matched details into my life. Rather, he sees incredible beauty and purpose in each part of my journey.
As David says, God saw every one of my days before I ever breathed my first breath and had each moment of my life laid out before I had even experienced a single one of them:
“You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.”
I still often wonder at God’s timing and purposes with the details of my life.
There are many things in which I struggle to see the redemption and beauty. Yet, the longer I live, the more I’m convinced that no part of my story is insignificant, but rather it is a part of the grand scheme of making God’s name look great.
My desire is to trust His master artistry in making things beautiful, and to not only make every day count, but also let every day count—even the days hard to understand.
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. –Philippians 1:6
