Tonight I sat down to do a task that had been begging to be taken care of for months.
I sat down to untangle my insane pile of yarn.
The culmination of two half-finished knitting and crocheting projects, and four balls of yarn, this mass of green and blue had been sitting in my closet since before the semester began, patiently waiting for me to do something about it.
Finally, I got sick of seeing it every time I opened my closet. The ruins of two perfectly good projects, getting more massive and tangled every time I moved it around. Well, the yarn wasn't going to untangle itself, tonight may as well be the night.
And as I sat there on my floor, fiddling with a pile of mostly pistachio colored yarn (which is really difficult to untangle when it all looks the same), I began to notice some things.
1. I don't really know if I want a blanket in these colors.
2. The scarf that is is part of this tangle has taken me over a year to finish.
3. The harder I pull, the more hopelessly tangled and dense the yarn becomes.
4. I really need to follow one end at a time, in order to get it properly untangled.
5. I need to find a better way to store my yarn and projects.
But as I was thinking about these things, it occurred to me: Isn't life with the Lord sometimes like a wild mass of pistachio colored yarn?
Stay with me on this one for a moment.
In some ways, our lives are like this tangle of yarn.
For one thing, the harder we pull and chafe, trying to do things our way, and with force, the more stubborn and knotted our lives become. We can pull and tug and force our way into situations all we want, but without the Lord to come alongside us, and start to untangle us, we are as helpless as that pile of yarn was in my closet. Unable to untangle and fix ourselves, and making it worse by trying to fix things with our own hands.
Yet the Lord's hands are gentle, knowing which strings to pull, how to loosen the mass of tangles that we have become, and just how it will all come apart. He knows when we need an extra tug. He knows where that string of poor choices will lead, if it is not unraveled to reveal the heart of the issue. He knows how to fix and untangle all of it, because he has the whole picture. He knows where every one of those hundreds of strands lead.
Every time I try to look at the big picture, or my version of it, it gets messier.
I think I'm doing so much good for it, and that it's starting to look less knotted. I pull a loop here, unwrap a tangle there, but without knowing where everything goes and how it all fits together, it's a longer process, a futile effort, and I may as well put it back in my closet. It is only when I start with one strand, one end, and follow it where it leads me, that I can begin to unravel the bigger tangle.
It is only when I trust and follow the Lord's plan for my life, that I am able to see the bigger picture of where he's leading me. It may seem like it'll be quicker to do it myself, to take on the bigger mass of yarn as a whole, and try to untangle it all myself.
Sometimes it takes longer to follow the individual strands of yarn to their ends. It seems futile to follow when I could be doing a better job pulling it apart as a whole. Yet in the long run, it is much more productive for me to follow the path laid by one strand, and to complete it before moving onto another.
Following the Lord's path for my life in the day to day tasks, as well as in the bigger issues can seem like drudgery. Sometimes (read, most of the time) I want to do it my way, and choose my timing.
Yet when I let him do the work in my heart, and fix the tangles in my life, and in my relationships with others, I find that somehow, miraculously, the clump of pistachio colored yarn becomes two projects and four balls of yarn again. I can finally finish the scarf that has taken me years, and maybe I'll give that pistachio colored blanket another shot.
Hanna Elizabeth
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