When I was a little girl, spending time at Grandma Miller's, one of the skills she would attempt to teach me was crocheting. I dreamed of the day I would be able to crochet my own doilies for my own table with my own vase of flowers on top.
We started learning with yarn. Grandma would create the slip knot, and I would begin my chain stitch. Some were too tight, some were too loose, but no matter, I was doing it! Then she showed me how to go back and make double stitches and triple stitches. I held the yarn in my fingers just so and went in and out with my crochet hook. Somehow, my project didn't always look like Grandma's. Did it really matter which hole I put my hook into? One loop seemed as good as any so if I lost this one I'd use that one. When Grandma came back to check on my work she would identify the problem areas and suggest I pull it out to the point of the error and then start again. Noooo! The agony of wasted work was more than I could bear. I was all for just moving on. I justified that "no one would notice" and continued to the end. When my work was finished, and I really considered the pattern created by my time spent, I had to admit, my mistakes were definitely noticeable and obviously interrupted the pattern I was trying to achieve. The project was not acceptable. Failing to right my wrongs was not acceptable. I continued to try, but since repentance was hard I tried perfection. Well, as anyone who tries to live a perfect life knows, I was always frustrated because I was never perfect. Besides that, this was all taking way too long. I wanted to be good at crocheting much sooner than was happening, so I quit. That's right, I quit before practice made crocheting easy, and the need for the re-do became much less frequent. and the desire for a quality outcome became greater than my aversion to starting over. I learned as much as my impatience would allow, but not as much I could have had I perservered and humility and desire.
Fast forward to Wednesday night. My friend is in charge of achievement days for the 8-11 year old girls at church. She wanted to teach them how to crochet a trim on a burp cloth for newborns. She called on all women who were free during the hour to help give the girls the one-on-one help they needed. I was not unrealistic about how much help I could be, but I was free that hour and thanks to Grandma, it was not as if I'd never crocheted in my life.
In came the little girls, full of enthusiasm and confidence. The needles and thread were distributed. Okay, I did hyperventilate a little when I saw it was thread, not yarn, but I remembered my doily dream and got excited. I listened to the instructions and then realized that I needed to be shown again. I was the person that was actually supposed to be helping, but no. "Could you show that to me one more time? Could you turn a little bit so I know which hand you're using?" After monopolizing the instructor's time and attention for as long as I could, I understood enough to help my adorable 10 year old apprentice at least get started.
I was pleased to see that she was ready to go. Her face was full of determination and desire and hope. I showed her how to make the slip knot. (I had at least retained that.) She picked up the burp cloth and the crochet hook and the thread. Well that was definitely too much to hold at once. I decided I could help her best if I held the burp cloth so she could conquer needle and thread. As one could predict for a first time experience there was lots of dropping the loop, failed attempts at finding the right hole, and tension problems, At one point, my wisdom from many years of experience suggested that we throw the entire project across the room and never pick up a crochet needle again and have a nice doughnut, but cute 10 yr. old never wavered. Eyes fixed on her task she continued on.
After 45 minutes she observed, "It's getting easier." It was true, each inch of progress yielded more accuracy and less disappointment. I was amazed at the determined strength of this little girl. As I looked around the room I saw other little girls with the same fixed resolution to succeed as they concentrated and pressed forward. It occurred to me that I was in the presence of greatness. This idea was confirmed when cute girl shared that every day she makes a list of her goals and puts them on a poster by her bed.
So just learn a little from my young friends. We must not give up. We must be patient with ourselves and allow our abilities to catch up with our dreams through work and repetition and commitment, and know that our future is in good hands, hands that don't give up, that are patient and persevering, and focused and hopeful and ready to serve.
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