Threadbare

When I was a little girl, I had a yellow blanket that I slept with every night. The blanket had, at one time, been a heated blanket because there were little pockets where the elements must have been. It had one of those satin ribbon edges and I absolutely loved rubbing the satin edge on my face to help me fall asleep. I wouldn’t go anywhere without that little blanket. I also hated for it to get washed. It didn’t retain the familiar smell that I associated with comfort when it got washed. But, Mama was always insistent on washing it at least every now and then when she could pry it from my fingers. It was the same blanket that my Nannie would heat on the wood burning stove when I had an earache. She would lovingly place it on my ear to soothe the pain and it would soothe me on to sleep.

As I got older, the blanket got thinner and the fabric more worn. Mama finally talked me into cutting it in half just so I wouldn’t be lugging around a big stinky blanket. When I became a teenager, I didn’t let go of my blanket. It became affectionately known by the nickname my friends gave it, “Yellow Smellow.” By that time, the satiny ribbon trim was long gone except for an asymmetrical slice on one end of the blanket. Even at fourteen years old, I would rub what was left of the satin across my face and remember the days when it had more satin to love.

I carried this blanket into adulthood though I really don’t have a clue where it ended up. It was threadbare, smelly, and not much of a blanket at all since it was half its original size. But, it was my comfort and my joy for so many years. As I was thinking about my sweet little blanket this morning, I thought about how I sometimes feel threadbare. I’m feeling more than a little threadbare now. Did I mention that Yellow Smellow had a hole in the fabric on one corner? Yep, a lot like how I feel some days. I thought to myself how even with all of the flaws that Yellow Smellow had, it was very loved. Even though I could literally see through the blanket, it’s value to me was never diminished.

Today, I took Mama to the surgeon to discuss her port placement. The receptionist there is someone I know through work and she is one of the most precious people I know. She asked me how I’d been doing and I told her I was hanging in. I sat down after getting Mama checked in but the next thing I knew, she walked into the lobby to hand me a sweet little thing from a tear-away prayer book. The verse on the card said, “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you, there is more of God and His rule,” from Matthew 5:3. At the top of the card it said, “Everyday miracles are Gods specialty.”

Mind. Blown. I couldn’t help but feel that God just sent me a card straight from heaven. When I was feeling as threadbare as Yellow Smellow, God said that I am blessed. Did you hear me? GOD SAID I was blessed. It’s sometimes hard to see the blessing, just like it was hard for my friends to see the value in Yellow Smellow. It is hard right now to see the blessing, even though I know it’s there and I know that when I’m feeling so threadbare, this is the time for me to seek God more than ever. Even though when I’m awake like I was at 2:30 a.m., worrying about everything under the sun, God is over there in the corner yelling “Yoo hoo, I’m over here.” Today, He just got out of the corner and sent a sweet friend to deliver His message. How blessed am I that God would use His child to put a word from heaven above in my hand?

Though the fabric of my life may be unraveling in ways I can’t begin to understand, I know the weaver of the fabric. Familiarity, even with things like anxiety, somehow brings comfort, just like Yellow Smellow. It’s stressful, but worry is somehow a comfort coping mechanism. It’s easy to worry about everything than to let it all go into the hands that can turn the threadbare into the gold woven. Like Mama would throw Yellow Smellow into the wash, to swirl and toss, God has thrown us into a turbulent time. Yellow Smellow always made it out of the wash a fresh, bright yellow blanket when it went in there a dingy, smelly mess. Even in its threadbare state when there was quite a bit of uncertainty of whether it could withstand the washing machine, it came out looking new again.

I know that through all of this, there is a message for me. God will do all sorts of things to get our attention. My human heart is unsettled and bouncing with thoughts that are sometimes just flying through my ADHD brain at a mile a minute. I pray for peace, wisdom, and strength yet then I wonder if by praying for strength, God is testing me further. If I need strength, I have to ensure strength training. By praying for peace, is God allowing things to swirl around me until I see the calmness that He brings in the storm? If I need peace, I need to know chaos. By praying for wisdom, am I having to learn lessons that I’d rather not? If I need wisdom, God has to school me.

God doesn’t answer prayers in human terms. He answers prayers in big ways, in ways that are unfathomable to understand until they all fall into perfect place. While I focus on the things in human terms, my mind and heart sit uneasy. But, when I step back and I see things at the God level view, I know, beyond all human comprehension, that there is a bigger plan in play. There is a God sized miracle on it’s way. After all, everyday miracles are God’s specialty.