With Fall approaching, I’ve been thinking of my sweet mother-in-love and what a blessing she was to me and to our family. She had an amazing ability to turn “stuff” into art. I’ve never met anyone with the artistic talent and creative thinking she had. She could take some fabric, beads, and thread and turn it into a fabulous costume. She was a dancer, painter, quilter, and artist. My children all have inherited her creativity and she lives on in their talent.
She began belly dancing in 1981, a hobby she enjoyed the rest of her life. Sewing beautiful costumes was part of the fun for her and she made many in different colors and styles, sewing beads or coins or metallic trims on them. In the late 80s she made all the costumes, designed and built stage sets, and directed and produced a community stage production of “Cleopatra.” It was amazing.
She also enjoyed creating things with the grandkids. She was able to turn cereal boxes, toilet paper tubes, bits of this and broken pieces of that into an award-winning haunted house complete with working light. Each brick and shingle was painstakingly hand painted, and the spooky trees were hand made. We helped her enter the haunted house into the county fair. Not surprisingly she won two ribbons for her effort. I don’t know who was more proud — her or us.
I think of my life in the same way; it is filled with odds and ends, discards, broken stuff, bits and pieces. Thankfully, God is the great recycler and everyday He challenges and changes me. His grace and guidance are turning me into a work of art. Yes, I’m a work in progress. But if I allow it, He will mold me into the woman of God he wants me to be.
Isaiah 64:8 But now, O LORD, You are our Father, we are the clay, and You our potter; All of us are the work of Your hand.