Passion

What do you automatically think of when you hear the word passion?

My mind and I keep going back to Alabama’s song, If I Had You. It’s talking about the passion between a man and woman, husband and wife, but since that passion originally came from God, to me it goes much deeper than just sex, or a union of a man and a woman.  The union in itself is great but a union as a result of a great love is greater and better.

If you read the last post I imagine some of you wondered how I could worship to such a ‘worldly’ song but since John and marriage are what has shown me the height, depth and width of the love of God it’s easy for me to hear Alabama sing  “There’s nothing, no there’s nothing that I couldn’t do …. if I had you.” and think of loving both John and God. First John made me feel that I could do anything, then God did/does, too. Scriptures say “First the natural, then the Spiritual” so this is no surprise to God.

It seems like one of the world’s goals is to stamp out passion in our lives. Think of what is meant by the Passion of Christ - the passion was the culmination of his whole life - “this is what I came into the world for” is how he expressed it. Passion is what drives us, focuses us, excites us, encourages us, gives us the determination to push on when it’s just not fun to push on. No wonder the devil and his little imps want to stamp that out of us!

Thanks to God’s healing I have felt more alive in that last couple of months than I have in a long time. God took away the chemical sensitivity that has held me captive for way too long. A good friend prayed for that bondage to be broken and it was. Part of the bondage was limiting where I went and that was stiffling me and thus my passion - for teaching, for sharing, for friends, for a lot of life. I found ways around the chemical sensitivity for years - friends came here, teaching classes here, sharing here (over 300 one time visitors in one year qualifies that statement!).

One of my passions is teaching. I love being able to sub-teach again. One of my second graders wanted so badly to learn how to sew that I offered to teach her here at Beulah Land. I love to watch her eyes light up when she sees all the different colors and designs in the squares for her quilt. We started out with some plain green, orange, blue and white squares and then added a couple more colors. Yesterday I had a stack of precut squares of many different colors and designs, even one with “The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly” design. I heard all 3,000 verses of that song before we could go much futher but finally I had her lay out different squares to see what her quilt could look like. She has a good eye for color coordination and would jump from ‘oooooh’ to ‘ahhhhh’ each time she rearranged the squares, creating her own unique quilt.

But sewing by hand is ssssssssssllllooooowww for a seconder grader who had never held a needles until a month ago. We’ve sewn about 10 squares together (yes, I helped) but there will be 80 squares in her finished quilt so it seems like a forever project to her, sewing by hand.

Rather than let this new found passion of hers be stiffled, yesterday I carefully showed her how to sew with my Singer sewing machine. We went over the safeguards several times before her foot ever touched the foot peddle. I even had several friends praying for her finger safety. Am I the only one who has sewn a finger to the fabric, straight through the nail???? I’d like to keep it that way here at least. After practicing with some scrap fabric she sewed her first two squares together then went to the ironing board and pressed the seam open. I was so proud of her - she did both jobs exactly the way she’d been taught, even to turning the iron away from her when she was done.

Her excitement feeds mine.  She was the only one who came up after class when I subbed and had to pick up the quilt pieces I brought in with me. She wanted to touch, to see, to know how I cut them out, how I’d sew them together, etc. That’s how I knew she REALLY wanted to learn to sew. Yesterday, she saw some quilt pieces, the newest one I’m working on, and had to touch them, smoothing the fabric down. Then she saw two of my finished quilts and had to pull them out to see them, cuddle them. I told her she’d be able to do more detailed quilts like that later, too.

God has so much for us. God IS for us! Sometimes life seems dull and listless, like hand sewing a 6″ plain patchwork quilt - never ending, doing the same old thing day after day. Then one day you wake up and there’s a Singer sewing machine with your name on it, just waiting for you to zip through those plain squares so you can create a more detailed pattern. And the whole world opens up to you, possibilties you never even hoped to dream about. Passion flows into your heart and mind, and like me, you’ll find you can’t sleep much past 4 or 5:00 in the morning, just gotta get up and DO or THINK something. (OK, for you night owls, maybe it’s can’t go to sleep til 4 or 5:00 in the morning!).

I love to watch the sparks fly when starting the kindling in the wood stove. I know that soon the kindling fire will spread to the ‘real’ wood and soon the fire will warm the house - fulfilling it’s purpose. Feed those sparks that kindle your passion - your focus, your dream, you goal, your purpose in life!

“You light a fire, way down deep in my soul. The flames keep buring higher, there ain’t no control ….. and there’s nothing, no there’s nothing that I couldn’t do …. if I had you.”

This entry was posted on February 15, 2009 at 06:30 am and is filed under Homestead living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.