alyciatimm

26 years ago today, my husband and I were both forming in our mothers’ stomachs.

I get it, no one needs the visual or the biology lesson, but hang with me here.

I am 28 days older than Andrew. When I think about that, when I think about the fact that we were both being formed at the same time, I am kind of blown away.

While God was crafting me, developing me, gifting me with two big brown eyes and one steady beating heart, he was also creating my husband, the man, the heart, that mine would fall madly in love with. Andrew was over 1,000 miles away and 19 years into my future, but we were still being formed, crafted, and molded for each other at the very same time.

I mean, I was a month ahead, but that’s kind of to be expected.

The more I think about this, and the more that I reflect on what our lives have been in these 26 years, both together and separately, the more essential these days of formation seem to me.

I keep reflecting back to psalm 139:13

For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

What a tender and intricate thought. I am overwhelmed when I think of these powerful and all encompassing hands working stitch by stitch to create these two new, and perfect, and unique pieces.

By the time I met Andrew, I was not quite so perfect. Life has a way of really cutting into these masterpieces. Life has a way of really pulling at some of the yarn, tattering and fraying the stitches of our lives, until this piece is not quite what it was designed to be anymore. Instead it is frail, flawed.

The process of marriage has been interesting. In these years we have worked diligently to sew his broken parts into mine. Somehow, by grace, and love, and sure willpower, we fit pretty well.

Our two tattered pieces were sewn together, and miraculously, I seemed to still be solid in the areas where he was tattered, and his stitches remained strong in the areas where I had holes.

Together, we were stronger. As two, we held together better than one.

Then one day, we began to unravel.

First it was our marriage. Life, and pain, and hardship all seemed to jam a needle under the thread and pull up with force until the thread snapped, and with the slightest jerk the whole frame was pulled, removed.

We were two again.

Then the progression, the pain, moved on to us as individuals. It slipped into a single loop of the yarn and it pulled, and that single pull just kept unraveling.

I cried out to my maker. I begged to know why I unraveled so easily, and why He let it happen.

He didn’t reply.

Then it happened to Andrew, and it was nearly the same story. The first few jerks, jabs, didn’t pierce the knotted yarn, but eventually it all broke through, and my husband was just as unraveled as I was.

We laid there, tattered, removed from one another. Not even masterpieces as individuals now. We were just two piles of yarn limp on the floor.

We were unraveled. We were unraveled as husband and wife, and we were unraveled as human beings. We were tattered, broken, vulnerable, breakable, unraveled.

Beautiful girl, one day something will unravel you. It happens to everyone. One day, something might grab hold of the masterpiece that you were knitted to be, and it will pull and pull until you too, are a pile of yarn on the ground.

There is nothing more painful than being unraveled. There is nothing more painful than losing that part of you that was knitted stitch by beautiful stitch in the womb.

but then one day, we both breathed again. One day, we were both knitted back together.

Not only were we knitted back together, but we were knitted into each other. We were no longer two separate items sewn into a single unit, but his yarn intertwined with my own.

Our pattern is intricate and beautiful. Each stitch is different that the last.

His yarn, my yarn, his yarn, my yarn.

Our masterpiece.

Our marriage.

We have unraveled multiple times since. This is not a seamless life, this is not a seamless process. Sometimes pain slips into a stitch right in the middle, and pulls it out. In these times we have to unravel all the way back to mend it. But He always knits us back together.

Beautiful girl, I say it again- one day life will unravel you. It might happen more than once. You may be broken down over and over again, unraveled year after year. This will hurt. It will seem unbearable. One day, you too might find yourself in a pile on the ground, pleading to your maker.

But you will be knit again. He can make something out of the pile of your life. He will make something out of the pile of your pain.

He can knit you into a pattern with someone life, or he can knit you back into the masterpiece that you are as an individual.

The point is, we are never irreparably unraveled.