Perfect Patches

Late last night I was last-minute patching my dh’s down-filled sleeping bag with a square of denim, there was a tear on the inside and one on the outer canvas cover (it’s an army surplus style)…I took my time, taking pride in the many little stitches…Dh even commented on how there looked like there were 300 stitches (I was half done and it wasn’t a very big square) and he’d have just whip-stitched it up so we could go to bed.

A little bit later, he was eyeing the sleeping bag that lay suffocating me over my legs and he said, “I think you’re patching the inside of the cover, not the outside.

Good Grief! All that painstaking work and the inner, more ugly stitches would show on the outside? Not to mention the gaping, ragged tear that I was trying to cover up in the first place?

Got me to thinking about how we “earthlings” try so hard to do our level best, keeping our outer man appearances up, and heaven forbid any of the inner turmoil show up and bleed all over the air-brushed image we want to present to our friends and acquaintances.

I’m so glad God knows the inner and outer parts of us and loves us anyway! He even allows some of heartaches, because how else would we know we needed Him, or that He held the answers to life’s questions?

My life is but a weaving between my Lord and me,
I cannot choose the colors He worketh steadily.
Oftimes He weaveth sorrow, and I in foolish pride
Forget He sees the upper and I, the underside…
The dark threads are as needful in the Weaver’s skillful hand
As the threads of gold and silver in the pattern
He has planned.
~Unknown~

And btw, when Dh corded the edges of his sleeping bag cover back to the inner down-filled lining, it turned out that I’d patched it on the right side after all.