Life Lessons from a Hat????

I have a friend named Emily who knits.  Not only does she knit but she's amazing at it...you should see the things she's made.  So this fall I asked her if she would be willing to teach me.  She said yes without hesitation even though she'd never taught anyone before.  So began the journey of teaching me to knit and I must say we've had our share of laughs.  Once I got the hang of it, and believe me it took a while, I'd like to think that I took off and I've made some very nice hats and scarves for my family. 

Around Thanksgiving my sister said she wanted a hat so we took a trip to Michael's to pick out the yarn.  So begins the saga of what I refer to as the "hat from hell".  By all standards it should have been a super easy hat to make - no fancy stitches or anything.  Well, let me just tell you that it's not.  I've started this hat 4 times (yes, that means I've pulled it out and started over completely) and visited Emily at least twice to have her fix my mistakes.  I mean seriously, no hat should be that hard to make!  Tonight I went to see Emily again and after some discussion, we decided that maybe the best thing to do was to scrap it because neither one of us could figure out what the problem is/was.

As I was leaving, we were joking about it and she asked me if I was really going to scrap it.  I said yes, but I think I'll start from the other end of the skein and just use a different pattern because my sister still wants a hat and I don't want to waste the yarn.  In the moment, I was struck with an analogy about life, my life in particular.

You see a lot of people in my life are experiencing major changes (new jobs, lost jobs, big moves, seeking direction for life), including myself and we all seem to struggle in that.  Well even though it seems as though this is the "hat from hell", if you flip it over and start from the other end, you can take the mess and turn it into something beautiful.  In that moment I realized that God can do that for all of us.  Even though it seems like one giant mess that would be easier to just scrap and start fresh, God can pull that one good thread out of it and take it and knit it into something pretty spectacular!  I guess I can't call it the "hat from hell" anymore especially since I just had a major revelation.  So whoever the lady was who came up with that ridiculous pattern....thank you!  Because of you, I was reminded of a valuable life lesson!