Our Tapestries

Sometimes in the quiet times, when things aren’t going very well, an idea from the past helps a little bit.

That happened to me recently. Things were kind of tough; and in the middle of the night I started thinking about “tapestries.”

I was a young woman when I first heard the word as it relates to our lives. That was 25 years ago, so I’ve had quite a bit of time to process the theory.

I’ve had time to understand that our lives  – our tapestries – are each filled with the vibrant jewel tones of the wonderful people who bless us, and the harsh, scratchy threads of the difficult ones.

Each of our tapestries are woven with the beautiful golden metallics of the Fruit of the Spirit — love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control — which bless us in unmeasurable ways.

Unfortunately, they are also filled with the twisted, knotted cords of the seven deadly sins of anger, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy and gluttony — both ours and the sins of others — which disrupt our lives so much.

Our tapestries are made up of the events in our lives. The wonderful events like weddings and births — and the not so wonderful ones. I bet that the ugly events that are too small to be detected by the world may be strong ropes running through our tapestries. Only we know they are there; and years later we may wince at the memories.

The theory about tapestries shows us that as humans, we only see them from the back. When we look at them, we see their roughness. The hanging and the raveling threads. The colors that seem to not match. The messiness.

And we only see our tapestries a little bit at a time. We never see them fully.

Guess who sees them fully? Guess who sees them in their glory?

Our divine Father.

When I think about my own tapestry, I think about the salad days of my youth when I was a young mother. I’m sure those tapestry threads are bright green representing freshness and joy.

In the troubled times, I think there have been many black strands mixed with brown ones. There probably were not a lot of pastels. If there were, I didn’t see them.

But slowly after the storms, the sunshine began to emerge in my life, and my palette was once again filled with yellows and golds, roses and blues.

Ecclesiastes reminds us that our lives are thankfully filled with a variety of possibilities. There are times to weep, times to laugh, times to mourn and times to dance.

Sometimes that’s so hard to remember when we are surrounded by dark threads. Sometimes we need to be reminded that we are in a temporary tunnel, that we are not permanently interred.

We need to be reminded that the sun rises every morning.

I’m in my 60s; and now when I’m in dark times, I’m pretty sure that things will improve.

I know that God, our Father, is with us as our tapestries fill up with the good and the bad, the happy and the sad. He is our constant Companion.