Mrs. Independent...

Have you ever had those moments where opportunity pours down on you like gentle rain and you get hit with a sudden overwelming realization that "you asked for this"....It can be something positive or even negative. If it is a good thing, I feel blessed. I know that I am often given opportunities that I probably don't deserve but I think because I dare to visualize and hope for them, they are imparted to me. If they are something that I thought that I wanted and in my current context they manifest themselves as something negative, I often feel there is a lesson to be learned within it. Even if that lesson is as simple as knowing that I don't always know what is best for me.
I grew up in a home structured around independence. Actually, structured implies it was intentional and often it wasn't. I learned the lessons anyway. I have always felt that I could do things better for myself than anyone could ever do for me. This mindset is a blessing and a curse. With it comes the knowledge that I have control over my life, I choose and therefore I get what I want. It also instills a sense of responsibility and when successes come up I feel an unequivocal right to own them. In the same breath, I also own my failures. The curse lies within the fact that as much as I learn about myself and grow from past lessons, there will always be an all-knowing power who sees the bigger picture. Sees my strengths and weakness and understands how I must grow to reach my full potential. To give up control, even if it is to hands more capable then mine, would signify a weakness. Oh how difficult this is for a prideful girl such as I. I understand that when I am humbled enough to turn over my weaknesses they can be made into strengths. The process of change scares me although I see it as inevitable and even just a little bit exciting.

Oh Bernina...

My sewing machine has spent the last three weeks in the shop getting a tune-up. Prior to that it was in Utah. It has been over five years since I have used it myself. I wasn't sure I would even remember how. We needed new hot pads...terribly and I decided this would be my first project with it back. Threading the machine came back like clockwork. The hum of the motor was familiar and as my fingers threaded the material through the foot I was taken back to a time when I was six. My mom first taught me how to make pillow cases. Mine were an awful "dusty rose" (my favorite color at the time)...I was chastised for trying to go too fast. My stitches didn't line up and the lines came out crooked. As I look at my finished hot pads I realized that even after all of this time and thousands of sewing projects since that first one....not much has changed. I am thinking that the only difference now is that I don't have my mother telling me to unpick each individual stitch so I can make it right. Instead I will hang these in my kitchen and use them and feel ok and remind myself "at least they work"...such is my life. Sometimes a little messy but "at least it works!"

...

Yuck....I am sick.

Thanks for taking care of me today.

Thanks for cuddling with me, picking up take-out so I wouldn't have to cook, for letting me sleep in, for running to the video store, and for moving my car.

Love,
Me