Threads of Love

“Although the threads of my life have often seemed knotted, I know by faith that on the other side of the embroidery there is a crown.”
-Corrie tenBoom

Corrie tenBoom is a woman I have admired from the first time I read one of her inspirational quotes. Her family was arrested for harboring Jews in Nazi Germany during WWII. She was sentenced to a concentration camp and spent time in three different locations. Despite the atrocity of what she saw and experienced, tenBoom remained faithful and did not lose hope. Once released, she continued to be of service to the mentally ill and set up refugee housing for concentration camp survivors. Eventually she traveled the world as a public speaker and authored numerous books.

tenBoom made famous an embroidered tapestry of a crown. When sharing it with people she would first show the back side; the work in progress, the mess of the many colored threads that appear to not have any relation. She would then flip it over to reveal an elegant jeweled crown and go on to talk about that first quote above - how when our lives seem to be a knotted mess we have to trust that all things will work together to create for us a beautiful tapestry, or in the example she used, a crown. Either way it’s a perspective that asks us to remain faithful despite what we are going through.

A couple months ago, a friend shared a picture of a quilt she made for her son. He is a patriotic young man and empathetic to the sacrifices made by our military. She chose subtle patriotic material centered in the middle by a cross made with tiny red poppies, representing those who have fallen while actively serving. I commented on how stunning the quilt was and what a beautiful gesture to her son to be gifted something so specially made with his momma’s love.
Her response to me took me aback, she said, “I am going to make you one just like it!”
“No way,” was my response. “You would do that for me?”

This friend is someone I met nearly nine years ago. We both wish the circumstance was different. After being tipped off by a mutual friend, she came to the small airport my son’s body was arriving to after his death while actively serving in the military. She approached me as I happened to be looking for someone outside of the holding room we were instructed to wait in. She explained that she was a close friend of a couple I had met at Walter Reed Army Medical Center at my son’s bedside. The gentleman was an Army Ranger like my son. He and his wife came to the hospital to visit a fellow ranger, not knowing the gravity of his condition. In the ranger community, family is important, ranger family that is. You never leave an injured or fallen soldier or his family, which also includes hospital visits and sadly, in some cases, funerals. She told me her name and gave me her card. I thanked her for coming and went back inside. I gave her card to someone to hold for me as I did not have a purse or a pocket to put it in, and then I forgot about it for six months.

As if my brain found the rewind button, our encounter replayed itself in my mind like a slow motion movie, except I couldn’t remember her name. I contacted our mutual friend who enlightened me and gave me her number. I reached out to her and an unwavering friendship was born. Since that initial meeting, she has become someone I can count on for care and support when needed. The same can be said of the mutual friends who introduced us. Out of a personal tragedy, people were introduced into my life whom I may have never known, yet somehow the threads of life wove us into the same tapestry.

Out of these friendships, hundreds more have come to life. Each of them can be tied back to my son’s life and the legacy he left, or as I like to say, the legacy he gifted me in the form of people and places. As my experiences have grown tremendously, the walls of my world have only gotten smaller. They say each of us is separated by six degrees, in my life it’s closer to two. I continually find myself meeting people who know someone I know, lived somewhere I lived, faced similar adversities, etc. We are immediately connected by these circumstances. We talk about how tragic and wonderful life can be when people come into our lives who understand where we’ve been and even where we may end up.

I envision my life as a tapestry, one whose final masterpiece I hope has a gazillion threads to go until it’s complete. While it has not always been one perfect pretty stitch after another, it’s the messy knots that have delivered love to me in the form of friendships. I could write a novel thick as War and Peace if I attempted to identify and tell the stories of each person whose life has been wonderfully woven into mine. I am grateful every day for the “jeweled crown” each one of these people represent in my life.

I received the quilt from my friend last week. When I called to thank her I couldn’t do it without holding back tears. She told me she knew the instant I commented she had to make one for me. After I opened it and spread it across my bed, I was reminded of the legacy of love I have been gifted. This quilt has its own category and she summed it up nicely, “every thread was stitched with love.”

We don’t always have a choice about what happens to us and just as I didn’t choose the colors of this specially made quilt, trusting that the magnificent crown being stitched for me is being weaved perfectly with love is all I really need to know. To all whose threads are a part of my crown, thank you.