Material Girl

Who are you?

What roaring fires of loveliness are you carrying around in your shell of a body? A body that will age and tire as your inner man matures and grows more glorious with each passing year. A body you will, one day, outgrow and need no longer.

What is going on with the real you, the you that does not have to conform, obey silly rules, fit in, behave, get qualifications and tick boxes? The part of you that doesn’t have a face and cannot wear a mask; the you that kicks your body into action when the time is right.

Our twenty-something-year-old couch is in dire need of reupholstering and so we, recently, found ourselves in a fabric shop. You know how we watch our solar apps start pumping power as the sun climbs here in Zim? That is what my happy hormones were doing as we entered the store. Whenever there is cloth to choose or admire, a part of my brain yawns and stretches like a swollen seed giving way to roots and shoots as it reaches into a great tree.

Possibility!

Potential!

This awakening is something I have felt many times, but I usually smack it back to sleep because…blink,blink….I cannot even thread a sewing machine and I didn’t ever study design, and so what business do I have being so excited about weaves and patterns, colours and textures? I don’t want to be a seamstress, it’s just something about the material. It seems random…

and I am, finally, paying attention.

When something stirs our emotions and causes our spirits to glow we must take notice. Maybe nobody else ever will. Perhaps there is a song or a place, a country or a recurring dream, a book, colour, tree or particular smell and this thing tickles your neck like a friend playing tricks with a feather. You scratch and swat, momentarily distracted from routine things, but then carry on with what you were doing before.

I think that this ‘distraction’ is our gift! It’s a moment in time, not to flick the feather away and roll eyes at the mischievous friend, but to grab that feather, plus the hand that holds it, and stare into the sparkling eyes of the Great Inventor. He strikes me as One who loves to be caught and swung around.

We are made in His image (Genesis 1 v 27) and so creativity and innovation are part of us whether we believe it or not. What if we were all bold, wise and confident? What if we quit generalising ourselves and took a risk to be different?

Enthusiasm and Imagination want to get married and Passion and Skill are longing to be in the same boat. Yes, there is a right season in which to do things, but how many times do we disqualify our own selves? We are unsure, hoping for permission to be granted or someone to lead so that we can follow. We reason ourselves out of a great prospect; something that may well bring as much joy to others as it does to ourselves.

I’m sensing an invitation to tarry a moment. To linger beside the rolls, ribbons and bolts although it doesn’t all fully make sense. Maybe I am a late bloomer and maybe I am right on time. It could be that I’ll just choose great prints for some cushions; or it could be that one day you will see a great multicoloured hot air balloon take off from a garden in the suburbs and as you drive past you’ll say to yourself, “I think I might know who has done this!”