2023 / 2. HEMS

Timothy’s new white suit arrived today. A Prime delivery, ordered on Tuesday and on our doorstep two days later. We live in remarkable times. Because he begins his service as an ordinance worker in the Bountiful temple tomorrow, I asked Timo to try it on while I grabbed my pin cushion. He stood on the raised hearth of our family room looking a little bit like a kid wearing Daddy’s suit. The sleeves were three inches too long and the trousers a good four inches past his heels. I asked him to carry my small Bernina out to the kitchen table and bring me my good sewing scissors. He handed me his suit, we read our nightly chapter from the New Testament, then off to bed he went.  Here I am, 3 am, finally finding time to do my writing exercise for the day. One of the magical things about deciding to write every day is you start seeing the ordinary of life with a writer’s eye. It makes the mundane sparkle. Everyone should write.

I spent some time in quiet introspection as I worked this unexpected task tonight. I am not a seamstress by any stretch of the word, especially since my Margaret, who tried her best to teach me to sew ten years ago, skipped town and took up residence in Heaven. If Margaret were here I would have waited till morning and begged her to walk me through it, knowing full well that she would eventually scoot me out of the chair and fix it for me if I whined enough. So instead, I had to pretend she was walking me through the cuffs of the suit jacket, which is fully lined. I really have no idea if what I did is functional. But it looks pretty good, to my untrained tailoring eye. The proof will be with the young man sound asleep upstairs.

Ironically, my sister Libby and I attended the temple today. We had heard there were some changes in the presentation of one of the ordinances and we were interested to participate. There were, indeed, some beautiful changes, not in the ordinance itself, but in how we were taught the meaning of it. 

I have struggles with some of the promises I make in the temple. I will keep those struggles to myself and my God for now, but I am not one of those profoundly blessed people who find complete peace and comfort in this holy place. I usually come out with more questions, like there is a pebble in my pretty white shoes and it rubs me raw in that one place. I see no need to hide this. It’s my truth. It’s not pushing me to abandon the whole thing. But I do have questions for which I search for understanding if not answers. I can hear the voice of my mother telling me, “You are not likely to find them outside. Search in earnest inside. So I return with my queries and a healthy dose of trust. If I die and find out I’m a fool, then at least I have lived a happy fool’s life of service and love. How can that be so bad?

So I am thinking, these past hours in my chair, my thumb and finger working the fabric and pushing the needle-led thread between two pieces of fabric… I am thinking how these little stitches bind two separate things together. I look at the hem of Timo’s trousers when I am done and discover it’s sadly puckered. That’s when I hear my mother’s voice again, whispering, “That will iron out. Don’t worry.” And you know what, she was right. Under the weight and heat and steam of my iron the puckery hem turned nice and crisp and even and flat. The threads and the fabric were forgiving. Just took a little heat and pressure.

So, too, I suppose, will my issues with certain aspects of my faith. Just because I don’t understand all of it does not mean it is not understandable. After all, we humans only use something like 10% of our brains. Mom repeatedly told us the Lord is just and it will all work out in the end. God is binding me to him. It may be a little wrinkly now, but I have confidence He can iron it out.

I miss my mom.

As I stood at my ironing board, pressing the hem of my faithful boy’s temple suit, I got to thinking about the woman with the issue of blood, as told in the New Testament. She’d been bleeding for many years. I suspect she had tried everything to fix it. When Jesus came through the crowd, and she hadn’t the strength to press her way through the throngs, she lowered herself to the ground and stretched her hand through the masses to touch the hem of his robes. With all those people pressing against him, he felt her need sucking the miracle out of him.

“Who touched me?”

It’s no accident that the woman, under Mosaic law, was cast out and considered unclean. I love how Jesus used the least likely people to teach us the most profound truths. It’s worth noting too that most of the people surrounding him were seeking miracles as well. And I think it is symbolic that it was the hem she touched. Not his flesh, not his head, but the hem of his robes. In my overly symbolic mind I imagine it was the knotted fringe of his rabbinical shawl, the Tzitzit maybe, that represented the priesthood keys he carried. Whatever it was, her faith, combined with his ability to heal, made her whole.

Tonight, clothed in my own doubts, I pray the touching of a holy hem will bring me comfort, if not answers. I am a woman with issues, and I am reaching.