It’s Memoir Monday, and this week I’m changing things up a bit. 

Instead of writing about a memoir of my own, today I’m writing to my daughter in hopes that one day she will look back and this memoir will be hers:

Remember that time when you were eight years old and you taught me how to crochet?  And remember how you used money that you made from selling your crocheted work to buy knitting needles and we checked out every book in the library that had anything to do with knitting?

And then remember how I looked on Craig’s List and found a used sewing machine for twenty-five bucks, and we drove to pick it up, and the lady asked if I wanted to try it out in her kitchen?  And then how I tripped over my own ignorance and had to sputter out, “I, well, I, um … I don’t really know how to use it, yet…”?

And remember how we laughed about it later when the sweet old lady was out of ear shot, probably shaking her head in disbelief at these optimistic novices who didn’t know how to thread a needle?

Remember how we went to Hobby Lobby and JoAnn’s Fabric and hummed and hawed about prices and scraps and clearance fabric, piecing together swaths of our favorite colors and counting out quarters and not having a clue what we were going to do with it?

Remember how we stayed up late that first night, clicking pause on YouTube like a billion times, watching video after video on how to wind a bobbin, how to load a bobbin and how to thread a sewing machine?  And remember how I got frustrated and gave up and sent you to bed without even sewing a single thing that first night when we had both been so excited?

And then we called in backup, and the neighbor came and kickstarted your first, pink project and then I dropped you off at another friend’s house to finish it off, because it takes a village (and YouTube) to raise a child.

And then we got it.

We figured it out.

And we cut, and we planned and we plotted,

and we sewed.

We made something, together.

It was so satisfying.

And it taught me about God.

How He created, and it was good.

How He delights in His creation.

And as I looked down at you, with your petite four-foot-two frame, I thought about how God made you inside of me, how you came from within me, and now you’re creating.

You’re not creating out of nothing like He did when He spoke and it was, but you’re creating out of what has been given to you,

and it’s so satisfying.

So satisfying to be made in His image, and to be given the ability to create, to enjoy, and to delight.

Just like He delights in us.

Even though our stitches aren’t straight and our seams are skew, He looks at those of us who are in Christ, and He delights.

Not only does He “take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing” (Zephaniah 3:17).

So remember.

Remember that He made you, and when He looks at you, He delights in what He has made.

A thousand times more than we delight in what we make.

Ten thousand times more.

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