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| Excuse the scarf...It's been a bad hair week. |
So, why
combine my faith with my crafting—other than the fact that faith should be
combined with everything we do? Well, it seemed only natural to me since God is
the one responsible for gifting me the gift of craft. Let’s make a really,
really long story short here.
Back in
2009 I pretty much had it made. I was very close to finishing graduate school,
I lived in a great apartment in a great area mere blocks from the beach with
great roommates, and money wasn’t plentiful, but it wasn’t scarce either. All
of that changed literally overnight. You see, all of that greatness was masking
a lifelong battle with depression, and one day it all just came to a head. I
grabbed the nearest bottle of pills (which happened to be Valium), a bottle of
vodka, and had myself one interesting night. Needless to say my attempt came to
naught, thank God, and within a week I had dropped out of grad school, quit my
job, moved back home with my poverty stricken family in a not so great area,
and was broke mind, body, spirit, and wallet. And then the real depression
began.
I had
tried to learn to crochet for years. My ever patient mother would sit me down
with the biggest hook she had and a skein of yarn and within five minutes I was
totally over it. I was always too busy to put any real effort into it. Well in
May of ’09, I was not so busy anymore. I sat in my tiny little room all day
staring at the walls and wishing those Valium had worked a little better. I
literally had nothing to do from sun up to sundown. And this went on for well
three years my friends. Then one day, I spotted a discarded ball of yarn tucked
into a corner somewhere. Mind you, by this point I was totally convinced that I
was a born failure and would never again succeed at anything. I mean, if you
can’t even manage to kill yourself thoroughly, what can you do?
Anyways,
for some reason I got it into my head to take that ball of yarn and one of my
mom’s crochet hooks and try to crochet, fully expecting to fail. And would you
believe that I actually managed to do a successful chain of, like, thirty
stitches. Well, this was as far as I had ever gotten before and I was almost
content with that. But, and I really don’t exaggerate this, something took over
my hands and before I knew it I had turned those thirty chains into thirty
single crochet stitches. I had never in my life done a single crochet stitch. I
didn’t even know what it was. My mother and I never made it that far in our
lessons.
By the
next day I was fully immersed and fully “hooked.” I grabbed books, watched
YouTube vids, went back to my mom, anything I could to feed the beast. Within a
month the bulk of my life crippling depression was gone and I actually felt a
tiny sense of hope and purpose return to me. And I am fully and thoroughly
convinced that God was the one who not only prompted me to pick up that stupid
ball of yarn, but that he also literally touched my hands and gifted me the
ability.
Now some
people may think, “God has better things to do than to teach you how to
crochet,” and to those people I say, “No…he doesn’t.” God gives us the desires
of our hearts and he also gives us exactly what we need when we need it. He
knew that at the time I desperately needed to feel like I was not a complete
failure and that I was capable of something...anything. By giving me the
ability to crochet, he did more than just give me a hobby. He gave me a sense
of accomplishment; he gave me something tangible to hold on to; he slowly but
surely renewed my faith in Him and in myself; and he gave me a testimony which
I am now sharing with you.
So, why
combine my faith with my crafting? Because… why not…?
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