When I tripped and fell and wrote a novel, I struggled a little to justify it. I had this feeling that fiction was somehow “less than.” It was just a story. It had a happy ending because fiction really should.

But my story wasn’t a biblical allegory like Narnia. It wasn’t particularly deep. It wasn’t the parenting book people think I should write (I shouldn’t, I’m clueless) or a practical treatsie on creativity in the middle of mothering that I wanted to write (somebody else wrote that better.)  It was about people I made up.

I started with a single scene. I plugged along to entertain my family. I finished it because I wanted to spend more time in the world and with the characters. But I still felt the need to apologize because all I wrote was a story.

My dad says, “‘Every story is just a reflection of the Grand Story.’ Is there goodness? Does it share truth? And is it beautiful and edifying? If the answer to those questions is ‘yes,’ then keep writing.”

And because my daddy is smart and sometimes I believe him, I’ve carried on with my story and my writing because… God made me. And I made this thing. And it’s not brilliant, or practical, but I used the gifts He gave me and made something I think is good. And I think that brings Him glory.

I saw this word picture in action recently when I took my daughter to hang out with the Sewing Ladies at church. This sweet group of ladies gets together twice a month to use their gifts with needles to bless others. They make quilts for every foster baby that comes through our church. They make quilts for the mission downtown. They make blankets and underwear and dresses out of t-shirts for children in Uganda, Haiti, Cuba, and just down the street.

They piece together these scraps of fabric they find at thrift stores, or cull from their own hordes, and they weave them into patterns and pictures, cheerful colors with embroidery and words of encouragement. They haul their big fancy sewing machines – and these women drive some Cadillacs of sewing equipment- into the student center and they spend the day chatting and stitching. They also let any young people, like my daughter, join them and they cheerfully fix their sewing machines, rip out their mistakes, and give them as much fabric as they want to practice on. They have such a Titus 2 vision for their little group. Everybody is welcome. And everybody will be put to work. Even me and my unskilled fingers can iron and pin and cut. (I offered to write a haiku about quilting, just so I could actually exercise a talent I was gifted in. Nobody took me up on it.)

As I worked at my post at the ironing board, I heard all of the conversations around me, how they took certain projects home with them and worked on the in between days, creating new patterns and matching up fabrics. The hunt for just the right fabric for a quilt would sometimes take two or three women digging through their stash and offering suggestions. What struck me was how deeply they cared. These blankets go to people with so very little. No comforts of home. They don’t have to pick out that one little missed seam or search for the perfect fabric to match, those blankets would serve a purpose without perfection… but they do. Because they don’t just want to meet a need, they want to make it beautiful. 

They’re using their gifts, which are infinitely practical, and making something not just good… but beautiful. This song of worship humming through machines and careful fingers travels literally around the globe. The women told story after story around lunch at the ping pong table about seeing their blankets turn up in unusual places. One lady was praying over her quilt and felt the need to put a specific poem in embroidery right into the quilt. Six months later, she met a lady holding a foster child wrapped in that special blanket who showed her the poem and told her how special it was to her. That foster mom had no idea she was talking to the woman who made that blanket.

Another family received a blanket for their first foster child from these women and then, six months later, a second blanket for the sibling they were fostering. Though the blankets were made at different times and by different women, both quilts had identical fabric on the back – something that wove those two siblings together.