You can never really know what is going on in the lives of the people around you, can you? The struggles others go through behind closed doors are often unknown to the people around them. I live in a very small community and had the privilege of lending a hand and a little comfort to someone that needed it. In turn she gave me inspiration.
She is such an amazing woman, fighting breast cancer and being all the things all women wish to be. Strong, beautiful, inspiring. She is always cheerful and happy in spite of everything. Her love for and relationship with God shines through her.
When i first heard what she was going through i kept asking myself what could i do? how can i help her? My skill set is quilting...so, I presented our homeschool group with the idea to make this quilt for her and was pleased that they wanted to take part and participate by writing personal messages to her. I just pray that they do not fade or wash away...i wanted to have the chance to wash it first to see if there were going to be any great catastrophes but i ran out of time. Pray!! pray hard.
I could not bring myself to quilt through any of the personal messages so i just outlined each box in pink. Then i spent what felt like forever straight line quilting, of random sizes, the rest of the quilt. It looks beautiful but was a lot more time and work than i anticipated.
I also wanted to hand stitch in some things that would be personal to her so i did a pink on pink breast cancer ribbon...a purple on purple cross...and the names of her husband and children, so that they would be with her when she used this quilt no matter when or where. I had not originally intended to make it pink but it turned out that they were her favorite colors. What a perfect coincidence.
She in turn gave me a gift...the gift of gratitude and appreciation(and a few tears) which really meant a lot to me. It is hard to know what people really think when you make something like this and then mail it away...and kids don't necessarily love getting a blanket.
This is ironically Breast Cancer Awareness month. What a perfect time to honor her fight by bringing her this quilt. If someone around you opens that door a little and lets you in consider it a privilege to do what you can....what seems so small and insignificant can mean so much to someone that is struggling. I know you don't know her but if you think of her take a minute and say a little prayer, every single one counts!
6 comments:
The quilt is beautiful, you've done a great job, no wonder she is touched by it, lots of love obviously went into it.
You are so inspiring! What a beautiful thing to do...spend so much time and effort for someone else who is going through a hard time. I'm sure you will be blessed for your efforts and your heart for helping others.
Love the personal messages and hand stitching---you put A LOT of love into it and it shines through!
What a beautiful story and quilt! You can feel the love of your stitching!
I want to thank brazilian brides very much for helping me improve my relationship with my pen friend. I am from the USA and she is from Brazil. You can see that we both liked each other, but I was doing something wrong all the time. It seemed that there was very little left to achieve the goal. The advice from this site helped me to understand what exactly I was doing wrong. I follow all that information already in a month of our communication we decided to move in and live together. I am damn glad about it.
Post a Comment