Nevi's blankets

I know it has been a while since I updated...things have been a little crazy around our house the last year or so, and quite honestly..I just haven't had the time. But tonite, I had a few thoughts, and this seemed like a good place to record them.

I have begun sewing in the past year. Not anything fancy, just mending really..(and the hobby was born out of necessity). Anyways, here lately it has started to become kind of fun to take something that is torn/ "broken" somehow/ or the wrong fit maybe, and try to 'fix' it... Today I picked up a couple of blankets at a consignment sale. They are very simple and look like the kind of thing your great aunt gives to you at a baby shower that no one every really wants to use. I was drawn to them because you could tell they were hand made. I thought to myself, "these were probably never even appreciated". So I paid the sale price of $1.00. brought them home, and threw them into the washing machine. When I got them out of the dryer, I noticed the stitching had come loose from the lace edges. "No worries", I thought to myself, "I just so happen to have a sewing machine handy...I'll fix these blankets right up and we will give them the new life they deserve".
However, when I began to try to mend the holes left where the inexpensive fabric and the delicate lace met, things didn't go so well...

It got me thinking about our job as foster care parents.
God has blessed Todd and I with the discernment to see the 'worth' in every child. He had placed within us the desire to try and 'mend' some of the holes and brokeness that losing your family creates... but it isn't always that easy.
A lot of times, no matter how much we try, we can't 'fix' those broken places.

But it doesn't change the 'worth' of that child.

...So on to Plan B.... I got out my needle and thread, determined to make those blankets useful. I could have just thrown them out- after all, I only paid $1.00 for them, and we don't really need them anyway. But I didn't... I began to sew the torn places, and I began to cry...
God flooded my heart with the reminder that not every child is a quick fix. Sometimes, we have to do things differently to mend the brokeness. It takes a little longer, keeps us up a little later... and at the end of it, sometimes the 'blankets' still have weak spots in them... places you can tell will break again one day. It would have been SO much better if I could have stitched them with a stronger thread/ or used a tighter seam... but that wasn't an option. They were just too delicate for that.

The blankets are beautiful.. they are sitting on my dresser waiting for their turn to be snuggled. If you look closely, you can see the places where the fabric doesn't quite line up and the knots of a "hand stitched" seam... but that is ok.. They have been given a new life, a new family to love them, and they are finally appreciated for what they were created to be. And for so much more...