Stitch Me Up

Monday, January 26th, 2009

I was in Fred Meyer yesterday picking up some iron on patches for my husband’s jeans when I turned down the craft aisle and was confronted with stacks and stacks of yarn all on sale.  Something in my brain that is usually dormant, suddenly sprang alive and started yelling at me.  “Knitting!  You have always wanted to try knitting, now is a perfect opportunity to do it, everything is on sale; yarn, needles, what else do you need?”  Feeling the spontaneous juices flowing, I picked out a skein of variegated grey yarn and a pair of size 10 knitting needles, a small booklet illustrating different stitches, as well as the patches I came in for, and set out on my adventure in domestic art.  My prior knitting experience ended in Preschool.  I had made a tiny rectangle, one inch by two, out of green yarn that matched perfectly the hue on my preschool color wall.  I remember treasuring that small green rectangle.  Proud of what I had created, I found use for it as a lap blanket for my Barbie dolls.

I decided I would knit a scarf, essentially a bigger rectangle, and I would give it to my husband if it turned out not to be an embarrassment to wear.  I have roughly eight inches completed and I must tell you, I look at my creation with such pride and joy for tackling a project I have always been interested in but never gave myself the opportunity to partake in.  I am having so much fun creating this scarf, and my hands are sore and fatigued from the strange movements unfamiliar to my everyday life, but I can’t help enjoying every moment; feeling things I have never felt before physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

As I intently watched the ever growing scarf proceed from my knitting needles I couldn’t help but feel a strange connection to the woman described in Proverbs 31, thus a deep connection with God.  I am not sure what it was specifically that made me feel this connection, maybe the fact that the Proverbs 31 woman made things for her family with her hands, but I felt peaceful, weirdly feminine.  A debate and investigation began in my mind as to why the simple act of knitting would make me feel peaceful and feminine and connected to God.

I have personally been examining my anxiety about being a woman in American society, career woman, aspiring mother, and wife.  Music surrounds my struggle as I am a vocal major at Cornish College of the Arts here in Seattle, and this is my senior year and I have a mandatory recital to perform soon.  Naturally, this event produces anxiety, but additionally I have been perplexed as to how to use this hard earned music degree to make a living, to not render useless my investment of time and money in its achievement.  I feel a pressure to make singing and performance my career, and I am trying to understand what to do about this pressure.  It could serve as a motivation to continue the work I have done musically, and grow to even new heights as a professional musician.  However, my experience with knitting was so powerful, that I am forced to reckon with the sterotypical idioms surrounding “homemaker.”  While I have put much significance on being educated and having a career I am finding my heart truly yearns to have equal significance placed on the things that for millenia have surrounded the female gender, being the force who nurtures a family and makes a house a home.  It is so hard to know if having both worlds is even possible, based upon observation I know I have not seen a woman live the life I want for myself.  Perhaps that is because I am the only woman who can live my life and realize my purpose here on Earth.  If God can speak so loudly to my heart through the simple quiet act of knitting, then I know that if I am still and know He is God then he will help reveal to me my purpose through peacefulness and joy.

Hero’s Strength

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

I love my dreams, even the frightening ones because each one is full of so many details I am anxious to decipher.  Some dreams require contemplation while others are so perfectly evident that I can just sit back and take in all of the truths presented to me.  Saturday night, I had one of the latter dreams and it spoke volumes.

One night walking along the street, my husband and I encountered a man with a very dark temperament who was prone to outbursts of grisly violence.  For some reason he had an unprovoked grudge with my husband.  Sensing this, the tough talking bruiser came out of me and I began firing threats at the guy in my husband’s defense.  Apparently the guy also lived in our apartment building on the second floor and we would pass by his apartment on the way up the stairs.  The guy stopped at his door and my husband was coming up the stairs behind him.  I saw him lunge at my husband and the two began fighting.  I quickly ran down the stairs with the full intention of kicking the guy in the head, but when I got there my husband had him on his back and was standing over him.  My husband looked up at me and then he grabbed the guy by the shirt collar and drug him up to his feet. Without saying a word my husband communicated “I’ve got you beat, and I don’t need to waste my time knocking you out.”  Scorned, the guy stormed off into his apartment and slammed the door.  The dream ended.

I awoke with admiration and respect for my husband, who knew exactly what he was made of the whole time.  He was not afraid to stand up and did not use words, he just acted when it was necessary.  Christ is our mighty husband and when we experience His might we are left feeling small and defenseless in comparison.  However, He is our defense and like my husband, He knows exactly what He is made of.  I don’t know about you but I feel safe in that knowledge, and will gladly curl up in those arms.  I praise God for His strength and for the blessing of a constant reminder of His powerful spirit and love for me made manifest in my wonderful husband.  I am attracted to my husband’s quiet confidence but I wonder at times if he could possibly be as strong as I sense him to be.  I am nervous to be exposed to his powerful side because I fear I am not equally matched.  But, when I do see just how mighty my husband is I am forced to unveil my feminine strength rather than donning the masculine version.

I must have something I feel I need to prove, not to others but to myself, perhaps that  feminine strength is just as strong as masculine strength but completely different on every other level.  Maybe my desire to robe myself in masculine strength is because I clearly understand the power associated with it whereas feminine strength escapes me.  Did I just not have enough role female role models who personified strength?  I dare say I am not quite sure what a strong woman looks like.  Is a woman strong when she can physically overpower a man?  I would certainly hope she would be touted as having strength, but this is not the feminine strength I am referring to.  When I see my husband’s strength, I can clearly see it as being specifically placed in him to suit his nature, but my nature is not masculine, so therefore my strength is not naturally masculine.  Feminine strength, like woman, is mysterious, it is not easily discernible like a cloak of animal pelts, but is more like a cleverly hidden tattoo or delicate lace underwear.  A woman confident in her femininity feels good about what she has on under the surface, and knows she doesn’t need to be overtly vocal about it for it to exist.  Personally, I am still shy about mentioning my tattoo of feminine strength but I am working on it.  I have a feeling when masculine strengh and real feminine strength mesh, the result is extremely intimate the way God intended.  I am slowly learning to be awstruck by my husband’s masculinity and to embrace my femininity and rid myself of my fear of said intimacy, and fall headlong into the throngs of divinely orchestrated love between a man and a woman.

Jealousy

Sunday, January 4th, 2009

In this day in age it is so easy to keep up to speed on someone’s life and only remain a germ on a fly on the wall of a friend’s periphery.  I find that I deeply want to be involved in the lives of my friends but I am not motivated to have an encounter be it a phone call, or a note of some kind.  I suppose it is fear creeping in and rendering me lifeless, as I often wonder if I have let too much time go by without engaging.  Is there a shelf life on an friendship in which one friend has gone AWOL?  Is there any way to be reconciled?  I long for things to be as they once were before I sequestered myself for no apparent reason, except it was too difficult and scary to proclaim I wanted to be known and to know someone deeply.  I have but one or two friends who have tirelessly put gargantuan amounts of effort into keeping my friendship blip on the radar.   Had it not been for their efforts, I am quite sure I would not have those friendships either.  I have said before that I am programmed to destroy myself against my better judgment, and I don’t get that.  I am the inflicter of pain in my own life and I dash all hope of realizing the things I dream for.

The jealousy is born from all this.  I see my friends living their lives in such journalistic vibrancy and discovering, upon examination of my own life, that I have a great lack.  This alone puts me in a dismal frame of mind; wondering if i’ll ever have what they have?  Pictures documenting all of the milestones, smiles, and utter joys of life are smeared by my envious green tinge.  It is not the pictures, or the blogs or the webpages, or having an exact copy of their lives,  it is that they are not afraid to show themselves to the world, and I always have been.  A seed of hope still lives that I may expose my vibrancy in such a way that displays proudly my love for the blessing of life.  My life is beautiful, my lovestory unique, and I pray I may regard their value among the highest in my own mind, because only then will I be able to love earnestly.  Only when I have dispelled the green fog that hovers around my heart can I step out in unshakeable confidence and live as an equal who is completely worthy to love and be loved.

Fear and Love

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

I’m a person who feels like most of her life is spent on autopilot.  I know there are deep currents in the river of my soul, however I always feel that I am slowly bobbing along in the eddies near the shore.  I don’t know what I need to do to naturally engage with the deep stuff, I don’t remember how to be brave and dive down and get swept up in my strength.  When I am floating on the surface, I am really just being safe.  It is certainly safer to bask in the gentle summer sun, lazily drifting with the cool water lapping upon my feet, than taking a deep breath and hurling myself down through the cold, dark unknown undertow, muscling my way to a goal I have no way of locating.  Don’t get me wrong there are seasons for both scenarios in life, times to relax and times to fight.  I am in a time of my life where I find it exceedingly crucial for me to connect with my warrior spirit, tear the gloves off and get down and nasty with all of the sh** I have let pile up in the dark recesses of myself.  Pardon, my language, but you may as well know this now, I use language, all forms of it, I am not afraid of a word, and sometimes I just have to use the “bad” ones to make my point.  My resolution for 2009 is to be ferocious and wildly confident in tackling the hard stuff, because I want my life to bleed with love.  I read a quote that I found to be full of wisdom,  “Everything in life is either love or fear, if it is not love then it is some manifestation of fear (anger, depression, guilt).”  It is easy for me to be weak and a slave to fear, but I want to be a warrior and stand for love!