“Don’t throw those out,” Mom said.

I looked at the different pieces of fabric in my hands. Triangles, rectangles, strips of different sizes and shapes. Leftovers from larger projects. Scraps, that’s all they were. Confused, I looked back at her.

“But they’re useless,” I said. “Why keep them?”

The sunlight from the window reflected on her glasses and made her eyes twinkle as she smiled. “Maybe on their own, but in a pattern they will form a beautiful design one day.”

I placed the pieces in a box for safe-keeping until her next project. What would it look like? My imagination pictured something breath-taking. Each piece would play an important part in the finished product.

My mom was always making something of scrap pieces of fabric. Whether it be a dress for my Barbie or pieces of a quilt, it amazed me how she made something out of “nothing.”

It was that way in her life too. She experienced many highs and lows. She watched all three of her children get married. With joyful, but sad tears she watched as her firstborn and his new bride left to live on the other side of our vast country only four days after they got married. She was happy for them, but her heart ached to have them move so far. Oh, how she would miss them.

She rejoiced as grandchildren were born. They brought a new piece of joy in her life.

Her heart was torn when both of her daughters went through divorce, but then leaped with excitement as eventually they found love again.

Then, she faced one of the hardest pieces in her life. She watched her husband fade away a bit every day. He slipped from her grasp little-by-little. We can only imagine the heartache and loneliness she faced.

Each of these “pieces” in her life by themselves were just pieces. Experiences. Challenges. Joys. She could have just left them as that, but she didn’t. She took each one and carefully examined her heart to see what God was teaching her. She didn’t always know why He allowed some things, but she trusted anyway. She also knew that each joy and sorrow were equally important. Together, they formed the design He had planned for her. A beautiful woman of God.

Do we look at our pieces and see what God is revealing to us? Or, do we think we know everything already?

Next time you experience a “piece” in your life, turn it over and see what you can learn from it. I plan to.

She dumped the different shapes of fabric on the floor. There were circles, rectangles, triangles and squares. Alone they looked ugly and didn’t seem to fit, but together her imagination placed them into a beautiful pattern. Piecing them together would be fun and she smiled as she wondered which grandchild she would give this new quilt to.

Romans 4:17 (The Message)

“….Abraham was first named “father” and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said he would do….”