Beauty For Ashes

One of my projects that has taken me more time than I wanted it to is finally finished and ready to be put in the mail.  It is a cancer quilt.  We (M and I) decided it would be nice to make a little quilt for T’s Aunt to have while she is having down days for chemo.  She is halfway through her treatments with 4 more to go for her breast cancer. 

Here it is finished.  I will show the the process backwards because blog.com always barfs when I try to upload more than one picture.  So here we go:

We decided to print pictures of her family on cotton fabric and make them part of the patchwork.  One of her favorite places is Seaside, Oregon so most of these pictures are beach pictures.  We chose the colors to look oceany.  I love it so much, I want to make a big one for our house.

Here it is layed out to see if all the blocks work together.  I hadn’t sewn it yet so it is without the sandy looking borders.

Oops there it goes.  I can’t download the rest of the photos.  I’ll try to get them and a bunch more onto my flickr account so you can see them.

Hope the rest of your day is good.

Periodically, I have insomnia.  It is incredibly frustrating and has been happening more lately than not.  I need to go to bed and get some rest.  I’m starting my 2 week cycle of catching a cold/flu again and I know my lack of sleep is not helping.  My mind is all in a frenzy of stuff I really must get accomplished but absolutely don’t want to. 

We watched Cast Away tonight.  You know, the movie with Tom Hanks where he is in a plane wreck and is stranded on a tropical island for 4 years all alone to contemplate the meaning of sand between his toes?  Yeah, that one.  I loved it! 

I am vaguely familiar with the feeling of isolation when one can’t have human contact and it is truely an awful feeling but right now, I am think that might bring some clarity to my inability to figure out a direction for my life or for that matter my inability to just sit in the presence of God and just be.  What would happen if I just sat and enjoyed his presence with no other distractions. Well, let me tell you.  I did just that at 5:45 this morning and ended up on the floor in front of the fireplace snoring.  What the heck! 

I am beginning to feel a repeat of last year coming on.  Last year was hellish for me.  Can you say, waaaaayyyyyyyy over committed?  Lately I have been thinking that a mentor would be a great thing in my life.  Someone who could help me think through my goals and teach me how to manage my time in a realistic manner.  Do you know of anyone? 

Well, I am starting to feel a wee bit tired.  Hope I don’t snore through church tomorrow.  Sorry, Randy, Josh, Eden or whoever else is preaching.  Hopefully my zzzzzzz don’t disrupt the service to much.  Just kidding…about the falling asleep part anyway. :-) 

Good night and good luck….to me anyway.  zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz snort, snort, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I’m waitng for a call from my doctors nurse and its killing me!  I’m not going to tell you why until after I know but I just need you to know this is going to drive me nuts.   Dont’ doctors know that when they give possible bad news to someone they can’t wait days to confirm or deny it?  I am tryng hard to be very mellow about this but it’s hard. 

I’ve made promises to my Love not to become an information junky and find out every last thing that could be and that is hard too.  The last couple of days my emotions havent’ been up and down much and I am maintaining a peaceful status quo..thanks be to God!  I am finding though that late at night my mind starts to “go there” and I have an extremely difficult time not reliving the past and hoping it’s not worse than last time. 

I think one of the big struggles is worrying about my babies.  What I have gone through has been hard on them.  They are changed because of it and I pray that it won’t warp them or injure their little hearts.  More than anything I hope and pray that it dosesn’t make them angry at God.  The guilt wrapped up in that for me is intense.  Then I go to the guilt of making my family and friends hearts hurt because I’m hurting.  The guilt of illness can suck!  Satan certainly knows how to play off of it and the battle for the mind gets pretty intense at the oddest times.  At the same time, those are the times that Jesus comes sweeping in with the deepest, purest, most all consuming peace and love that one can experience.  It is beyond imagination and difficult to discribe to anyone who has never been in a place of deep desperation.  It is one of those things that when you experience it, you thirst for those times again like one who is dying in a desert and hunger like one who hasn’t known nuritment for weeks.  It is a marrow bending experience.  However, for me, it has only happened when everything periphrial falls away, the only thing left is raw desperation for the presence of God in a palpable way. 

Frankly, right now, I’m scared of wanting this because I know what has to happen to be here and I’m having a hell of a time (pardon the cusing) letting go of my Love and my babies.  Call it idolitry or an inability to let go of control or both but it’s beyond hard.    My life is good, I want to continue.  I am not afraid of the actual moment of death.  I know where I’m going and am even excited to get there but I am afraid of watching those around me suffer because I suffer.  It HURTS  really bad.  I am scared, as silly as it sounds of hurting those I love so deeply and who have loved me through the muck.   I don’t want them to have to love me through more muck.  I don’t want to let them down.   I also don’t want to do this again…desperately I don’t want to do this again. 

I guess I’m crying out a bit because I’m having a very difficult time expressing why I’m upset about this possibility.  I’m sure you’ve guessed what it is by now but I’m still not going to say it until I know more.  I am worried about my little family.