Mar'ah: Her Hands

"Charm and grace are deceptive, and beauty is vain, but a woman who reverently and worshipfully fears the Lord, she shall be praised!

Give her the fruit of her hands, and let her own works praise her in the gate of the city!"

Proverbs 31:30-31

Today is my mothers birthday. She is not here, she went to be with the Lord a few years ago. However, this week I thought alot about my mom. There are good memories and bad memories, there are helpful things I learned from her and some things I wish I had not learned from her. I thought about some of the talks we had...both calm and heated. Of everything that I was remembering however, one thing really stood out. My mother's hands.

My mother had beautiful hands. She never had a manicure, did not wear flashy nail polish or long nails, her hands were beautiful because they were useful. She cooked, cleaned, sewed, embroidered, wrote, crafted and many more things that I just do not have time to recall. This year however, even if she is not here to be celebrated in person, I want to celebrate the works of my mothers hands and that legacy she left to me which she inherited from her mother, her mother's mother, and my father's mother.

Quilting is something that has tied every generation together in our family. We all made quilts though the techniques have been very different showing the fingerprint of each artist. Quilts are almost an embodiment of the artist. When the artist is gone, you can wrap yourself in it and find the warmth of that person still there with every stitch they had put into it as a labor of love. Wrapped in nostalgia, you have the brief escape into days gone by, though never to be recovered or relived, they stay tucked safely away in the threads of the artist's palette.

The women in my family made beautiful quilts with their hands. But even more than the physical memento, they leave a lasting impression for us to cherish through time. The quilt is a symbol of their love, their patience, their labor and their creative genius. Today, I celebrate the works of their hands, most of all, my mother's hands.

Happy Birthday Mom, I love you!