My Journey to Healing, as a spouse of a recovering Porn addict.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

About trusting in God and sewing pants.

This is a pair of pants that I made my 4 year old.  What does trusting in God (step 3) have in common with sewing a pair of pants?  Well read and you will find out :)

Sometimes I like to pretend that I can sew and that I am getting good at it.  Well with fall and winter coming I dug out the clothes and found that the girls really have no pants. So I thought about making them some since like I said, sometimes I like to pretend I can sew.  But then I realized that really, there was no way to do this. Fabric, patterns, thread, elastic... All that is expensive and since they have NO pants, well that is a lot of pairs of pants to make and a lot of stuff to buy.  So I was thinking about how to just buy some pants.  Well Then that wont really work for the 2 year old because she is just barely 2, she fits in an 18 month length in pants, but she is potty trained, so without the diaper, they come nowhere close to fitting. So we go back to making them.  Well a friend of our Cranio-sacral therapist makes dog beds for the animal shelter.  She was given a whole bunch of corduroy.   She deemed the corduroy too beautiful to be used for doge and either burned or tossed.  So she asked her friend, our CST if she knew of anyone who could use the fabric.  Our CST said to me that we jumped right into her head!  So We were given the fabric.  There really is tons of it and it is beautiful fabric.
So patterns went on sale, I picked up a couple and I finally started to work.
I seriously have had problem after problem with these pants.  I have wanted to give up more than once.  I have had to unpick, restructure, re cut these pants.  That was all just the beginning.
Now let me back track just a bit.  I drove a friend home from our last meeting, and we sat talking a bit about step 3, which we had discussed in the meeting that night.  We talked about how we used to think that we trusted in God, but after learning more about the step, reading it, and trying to apply it in our lives we realized that maybe we don't.  This part really jumped out at me... "Continued submission to God's will reduces strife and brings more meaning to our lives.  Small things like traffic jams are no longer cause for upset..." (LDS Family Services Addiction Recovery Program : A Guide to Addiction Recovery and Healing. Step 3 page14)

I realized that while I may think I trust God, I really don't.  In the big things, for the most part, yes I do.  But the little things get to me.  They get to me a lot.  A lot more that I ever cared to admit before.  When we read that the other night it stuck with me.  I talked to my friend about it.  We had a great discussion about it.  It has stuck with me all week.  I have wondered how to change it.

Well tonight these pants taught me a lesson, about the little things, but in a big way.
You see, my kids having no pants because we can not afford to buy them is a big thing, right?  Yes, it is.  Well a way was provided that I could provide my kids with pants for cheap.  With this pair of pants a whole bunch of little things have stood in the way.
first, they were sewn together weird, I tried twice to fix them and was crying and just gave up, I was just making it worse.  After a couple hours I took some pictures and posted them in a sewing forum.  I got some tips.  Have you ever unpicked the work of a serger.  Um, YEAH.  I sat and did that.  I fixed the pants.  Then they sat, and sat.  Finally I decided to tackle the ruffles.  So today I started at 3.  I put new thread in my serger.  I didn't thread it right.  3 tries later I pulled out the book.  Still couldn't get it right, kept breaking this thread or that thread while in the middle of it. I must have re-threaded that thing 15 times.  I was irritated, frustrated and just done.  I wanted to chuck them and the serger out of the window.

Finally figure out my thread problem, get going again and a needle snapped off.  Now I am irate and about to call it quits and tell husband we are putting pants for the girls on the credit card because this is too much stress.  Then step 3 pops into my head, my discussion with my friend about the little things.  And Trusting in God for those too.  So I sat back, and said a prayer.  I told my Heavenly Father that I couldnt do this, I needed help, and these pants and the warmth of my kids depended on Him and I would trust in Him to guide me through this.

Guess what?  Well obviously from the picture above, you know that the pants worked.  Did they go right together after that?  No they didn't.  I broke another needle, had a few other snafu's with it.  But really for the most part they did.  And my attitude changed too.  And I said another quick prayer or two as I was struggling feeding them through my machine.

They are done though, they look ok too. And I learned a lesson.  You cant really fully trust in God for the big things unless you know He has your back on the small things too.   I think now every time she wears those pants I am going to remember that Trusting in God in the small things helps us to trust in Him in the big things. Small things do matter.  Small things in every way, good or bad lead to big things.


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