On Finishing (With Help)

It's Sunday night, and I am in my parents' basement, making a bathrobe out of an unwanted top sheet. Though this strikes me as a bizarre thing to be doing, especially squeezed into the hectic few days before I head off to Europe for most of the summer, the logic is on my side. The facts are simple, you see:

1. I don't have a bathrobe.
2. I want one.
3. I don't like this top sheet AS a top sheet.
4. It might make a fine bathrobe.
5. Years of home schooling, one sewing class in high school, and a brand new sewing machine, make me perfectly capable of making a bathrobe.

I've done most of it, actually, and I am particularly pleased with this effort. It is going smoothly, the seams fitting together and lying flat as they should. Sewing has, for me, been a particularly refreshing hobby in the past year. Unlike teaching or even writing, sewing is mostly predictable. The materials are immobile and insensible, and any disasters along the way are directly caused by my own carelessness. I have spent many hours this way during the school year, specifically in the month of December, when I watched the entire "Lord of the Rings" trilogy while sewing endless straight and short seams, in green and beige, creating a quilt for my sister for Christmas. This project, compared to that one, seems quick and simple.

The seeming is deceiving, however. On the eleventh step (out of fourteen), I begin to lose interest. The fabric starts to behave in a human way, taking on a stubborn personality and morphing out of the mold in which I'd cast it. It will not stay flat, nor sew straight. I sew the crooked seam until it looks terrible, and then tear it out and try again. Once again, it veers to the right, off of the fabric altogether, so that the sewing machine twists thread together in space before screaming to an angry halt.

It's too hard, I think irritably. I can't handle this. I'm tired. I leave the nearly-finished bathrobe on the table and leave the room, going to work on another project. Maybe, I think to myself, I don't need a bathrobe after all. I'll just go without. The thought of two other abandoned projects, lurking sadly in a basket at the top of my closet, gives me a moment's pause, but I don't spend too much time on it. I have other things to do, after all.

I'm leaving the country in two days. Leaving to work on a farm in Austria for six weeks. I've explained my plans so many times in the past month that they almost don't make sense to me, just words that I keep repeating, the same conversation over and over:

"So, what are your plans for the summer?" asks a colleague. "Summer school? Classes?"

"No," I reply. "I'm going to Europe."

"Wow. That's great. Where are you going?"

"Austria."

"Just Austria?" I can tell that the conversation has begun to grow odd for them. "Are you going anywhere else?"

"No... I'm actually not traveling. Well, I'm traveling to get there, you know. But it's kind of expensive to travel anywhere else. So I'm working on a farm."

"A farm?" Truly, the young teacher begins to grow stranger by the second.

"Sheep farm. Bed and breakfast. Up in the Alps."

The conversation then veers in different directions depending on who's asking. From my teaching colleagues, I usually hear a "Do it while you're young!" From my friends come more questions. Do I know this place? Why am I doing this? To my Christian friends, I continue to explain my quest for emotional, mental, and spiritual restoration. I cite my need for rest after a challenging, wearying year. I assert that working, on a sheep farm, will be restful. And I hope it will.

Today, I've told someone that I am going to Austria to listen. To God, mostly. How vital that listening seems now, as I reflect on a noisy year. I remember times that I chose to listen, and times that I didn't want to hear. If I can hear Him first, won't the rest follow? So hard, though, to explain this need to hear in such a brief conversation, especially as I suspect that the connection between listening and farm chores makes sense only to me.

I am distracted from my project (itself a distraction from sewing) by the return of my parents from church. I come into the family room, where the paraphernalia of an abandoned sewing project still festoon the couch and ironing board.

"How's this going?" my mother asks innocently.

"Bad," I sniff. "Nothing's right. The fabric is being... just wicked. I can't make it right."

"Hm," she replies, picking it up the half-done seam. "It's good. You've done a good job. It's just not done."

"No."

"Mind if I try?" she asks. I don't mind much. I'm weighing the value of doing this "all on my own" against the value of accepting help. Help wins today.

Ten minutes later, I return to the sewing machine, where she has magically charmed the slippery fabric into shape. I get out some of the remaining pieces and sit down.

"Let me," she says. "You rest. I'll do it."

So I sit back and watch as my mother, with her twenty-six more years of experience, finishes for me. It's not triumphant, I think, but it's real. Sometimes I am tired--I imagine everyone is. I think of the people, in the last year, who have helped me finish things. The kind words that redeemed lonely days. The peace and quiet that sweetened weary mornings. The friends who encouraged. The family who loved. That help, often unexpected, that brought me here.

It's not done all on my own, but if I have discovered anything this year, it is the glory to be found in unlooked for goodness, blessings I have stumbled upon when I was tired and ready to give up.