Crafting With Kids

When I was a lot younger I learned how to sew.  Now that I am older and can look back on those years with some measure of maturity and objectivity, I realize that my learning to sew must have been miserable for my dear mother.  I am a perfectionist of sorts, choosing those thing in my life which must be faultless, impatient with myself, unrealistically expecting mastery on my first try. 

Amy is quite crafty and creative all on her own.  She sees something to make, and she makes it her own way, substituting supplies when we don't have the "right" ones.  She always has something in the works.  In this way, she is a dream child.  But the others need help. Lots of it.  They need for me to set aside a block of time to do it for them help them until the project is finished. A block of time with no distractions.  And we're not stopping until we're done.

Yesterday big sister started some thread spool dolls in minutes, cute little things.  Her enthusiasm was contagious, and soon I had two smaller girls avidly interested in making "something" on their own.  (But not something Mom suggested, of course, something that was their own idea.)  You have to understand, I am one of those people who run from crafts.  And to me, crafting with kids is like... well, like the Chinese bamboo-under-the-fingernails torture! **Shudder.** Today, underneath my outwardly, barely adequate, meek and quiet spirit,  I have been writhing and twisting, and occasionally screaming.  I have a five-year-old learning to back-stitch.  She does well for about three stitches, and then she makes a huge mess, and then I undo it and make about a dozen stitches myself.  Then we are out of thread, so I get some more and start it, then she takes three stitches, un-threading the needle a dozen times in the process, and we repeat.  We have been doing this project for hours.  But I have to give her credit.  She is DETERMINED.  I am happy to see this character quality in her, as painful as it is to my selfishness.

I know this is necessary.  It's how we learn.  Oh. Heh heh.  I am not talking about Emily learning to sew.  I am talking about me!  I am flunking... I am not nearly as determined to be patient as Emily is to learn to sew.  Above is her finished project, done 75% by me.  My own project will not be completed til I go to heaven... but Jesus is still working on me!

He's Still Working on Me There really ought to be a sign upon the heart,
Don't judge her yet, there's an unfinished part.
But I'll be perfect just according to His plan
Fashioned by the Master's loving hands.

Chorus
He's still working on me to make me what I ought to be.
It took Him just a week to make the moon and stars,
The sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars.
How loving and patient He must be, He's still working on me.

In the mirror of His Word reflections that I see
Make me wonder why He never gave up on me.
He loves me as I am and helps me when I pray
Remember He's the Potter, I'm the clay.

--Joel Hemphill

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended:
but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind,
and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded:
and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.
Phil. 3:13-15

Being confident of this very thing,

that he which hath begun a good work in you
will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:
Phil 1:6