When I Have Time for That

my latest painting

In the morning, after I read my Bible but before I start breakfast, I go outside to feed the cats and the fiber rabbits. It is a pleasant chore to be rewarded with nuzzles, but outside is foggy and drippy and patches of mud gather on the hems of my jeans and sometimes I wonder what the point is. Less mice? Check. Fiber to blend into my yarn? Check. But the overall arching picture of how this all glorifies God? I’m unsure.

I ponder all of the activities in my day as I am cracking eggs. Preparing food is a necessity, to be certain. But cutting apart fabric to sew back into a quilt? In this time and place, a first world nicety, not a necessity. Overseeing my children’s education and clothing them? Certainly. But teaching them to drive a tractor, or knitting a handmade cardigan? Not “have-to”s.

So what are the have-to’s? Lists are made from such priorities, usually involving driving someone somewhere or planning the next week’s meals from which no food seems out of reach at any season. With particular concentration to checking off those lists, the blasting fire behind my mind and body to Get Thing Done is fueled. But the creative arts, the hobby farm, the made-from-scratch? Those are activities in which to engage when I have time for that.

I recently read—rather savored and chewed on and deeply imbibed—Traditional Weavers of Guatemala. Out of a sober history and a continued struggle in their lives, such beauty in their handwork has flourished, and continues to flourish. It is a necessity, to be certain, for livelihood, for culture, for color in dark and somber times. These weavers don’t spend their days vacuuming 3000 square foot homes or driving children all over the place. They weave. And live.

In contrast, I’m pressed in that I am awash with time and opportunity to discover and play with such things as soap making, herb growing, and art journaling. I have the benefit of income, internet, relative safety, library-book-borrowing privileges, and liberty in this country to come and go as I please. With so many roads leading to so many destinations, no wonder sometimes I find myself lost. But is God not glorified by my using not only my time, but my opportunities and talents? As a creative God, does He not also take pleasure in the “unnecessary” arts of needle and thread, milk pails, and paint? And if I have such supplies and yet do not work with them, isn’t that being wasteful?

But let us not fool ourselves thinking that such are wastes of time, or that we will “later” have time to make a quilt, much less make a life. How we live our lives every day is indeed how our lives are lived, and what we make time for, that is which we do.