Making Room

This summer, I began a sewing project in earnest.  This was no small task, for not only was I planning, piecing fabrics, and sewing them through, but I was taking on the more giant task of stitching two colorful and diverse lives closely together, binding them permanently at the seams.

One hot day, we decided that no more were our two girls going to play then spat then separate to two rooms only to fuel up for the next exchange.

Because when these babies were brought into the world, the thought upmost in my mind was that each birth brought me a child to rock and raise but it brought my children something far more: a lifelong friend.  

And when God promised before you were in the womb, I knew you, He also knew well the very hearts He would bring around our dinner table.  You know, God has a way of planning those things.

So setting aside my despair over the girlie arguments and squabbles, my hope is that in sharing a room, they gain an equally great gift to that of a lifelong friend:  the ability to get along with others who are not like them, to live in community with grace and kindness, and to love in the midst of the differences.

I figure the room sharing is a built-in way to help prevent them from living selfish, parallel lives and disconnecting from each other in separate spaces.  It plunges them right into the messy mix of relationship, into the give and take of shared space, into the realm of resolutions and building into each other’s lives. 

So the beds were set up, the clothes moved over, the logistics of leaving a space and occupying another all tended to. The girls searched and shopped and finally settled in on different but coordinating fabrics from a pretty line, Circa by Jennifer Paganelli, inspired by French flea markets.  Stitch.  We put our heads together on what was needed: spreads, Euro pillow, bolster, throw, canopy overhead.  Stitch.  They huddled together and with great excitement picked out a new monogram, just for their rooms—a vintage 1920s font—and chose the thread (blue metallic mixed with hot pink).  Stitch.

Stitch, stitch, stitch, stitch, stitch….the threads of ideas and actions began to bind as I watched them find a way to mediate tastes and blend the differences into something beautiful. 

And as I sat bowed over my machine, my mama heart bowed before their Lord and maker who in His wisdom appointed them for sisterhood for specific and special reasons.  I sewed and prayed for the sisters to grow seamlessly together over this time, in this space created with planning and love, in this one-chance-deal they have to discover the treasures they are to one another and realize that in togetherness their world is a much more vivid and wonderful place.