Sew LOVED!

I hardly know where to start with this post, except to say that I am blessed with overwhelmingly wonderful friends and family! Genna, a dear friend and talented quilter, held a quilting bee for me last Saturday. She had been working for months selecting the fabrics and design, organizing the sewing of the quilt squares by different people (including my mom, sisters, and grandmother in different states), and piecing together the final product as the squares were returned to her.

This weekend, my sister Liesl and friends from church and school and the neighborhood came together to stitch on the nearly completed quilt. It was a joyful time, with good food (cookies! cupcakes! chocolate cake! chocolate peanut butter cups!!), good conversation, good laughs, and good sewing (and some not-so-good sewing I contributed to keep my hands off the rest of the cupcakes). Here's a photo of the bee participants holding the almost-final product:

Such wonderful people! Such a wonderful quilt!

The quilting bee and the quilt itself are beautiful visual reminders of the good that has been manifested in this whole cancer experience. Yes, you heard me right: good can come from cancer. (But don't ask me to explain this again a few days after my next chemo infusion when I'm feeling awful and will tell you there's nothing good about anything. Ever.)

The vibrant and beautiful fabrics and unique squares remind me of the many different people in my life -- whether or not they participated in this project -- who love me and have demonstrated their care. These vibrant and beautiful people are as unique as the fabrics and squares on the quilt. They differ in personality, in how they know me, in how they show their love (hugs, childcare, letters, phone calls, meals, rides, emails, errands, book and movie loans, support, encouragement, prayers). Each person is special to me on their own, just as each fabric or square on the quilt is wonderful on its own.

But then you see the quilt in its entirety, the result of stitching together all those fabrics and squares. And it's breathtaking! All those people and all those ways of showing love form a great, new representation: a blanket of comfort and peace. All those beautiful colors and patterns positioned beside one another become something even more vibrant: a palette of pure joyfulness.

And that, dear friends, is the good that has come from this experience. Never before have I been the recipient of such an outpouring of love. Never before have I experienced the comfort of having so many people rally around me to form a seamless blanketing of support and encouragement. It's humbling and awe-inspiring and an experience I will never forget. That's how God works. Our arms give His hugs, our mouths speak His words, our hands give His care; all together we and our actions form something greater than any one of us on our own, something closer to the wholeness of God we will know in heaven. I begin to see why the Bible calls the global church "the body of Christ" -- the whole is a closer representation of God's all-encompassing love than any one person can be to another. I am reminded that our small individual roles are beautiful on their own but are also part of something great and even more beautiful.

Genna knew exactly what this quilt represented from the project's inception. (And she, a literature major and wise Christian thinker, could certainly explain it more beautifully and clearly than I have tried to do here!) You can see below that her objective all along was to remind me that I am loved. On the back of the quilt, she quilted the word "LOVED" to remind me that I am loved by friends and family and loved by God. And, as with God's love, I humbly accept in grace, knowing that I did nothing to deserve this amazing gift. I am loved!