If I remember rightly,
you like to knit in your
spare time, while on the train
or watching movies from
your couch, the needles
in your hands turning
yarn into soft blankets,
much the way you take
your words and purl
kindness into the fabric
of my mind—like the time
you came to our new city,
our new home, bringing
books with kangaroos
and wallabies for our kids
to read, then teaching them
to bite the corners off a Tim Tam
and drink hot chocolate
through their biscuit straws
until they fell apart.
We talked in half-finished
sentences punctuated
by my children’s needs;
you listened to me
worrying those threads
of motherhood, running
my hand back and forth
along the warp and weft
of one precious child’s mind,
the complexity of neurons
knitted together with memory
and time, firing so fiercely
I sometimes wonder
if my unskilled hands have
followed faulty patterns
and made a mess of these
delicate designs;
your gentle words,
like gentle hands, picked up
the stitches I had dropped,
threading through a vision
so benevolent—a mother
trying hard to reach her daughter,
her daughter trying to respond—
mending my understanding
of what it means to be
restored, weaving words
of praise with sorrow songs,
covering us with salvation
robes spun by the hands
that knit us all.
The featured image, “Winter Stillness in the Garden,” is courtesy of Steve Moon and is used with his kind permission for Cultivating.
Bethany Colas is a poet, military spouse, and mom of three who writes about God’s grace in the ordinary wonders of daily life and the tender sorrows and joys of parenthood. In addition to writing poems for services at her church and participating in Pass the Piece collaborations with other artists, her poems have been published in Ekstasis Magazine.
She currently resides in the suburbs of Connecticut with her family and their yellow Labrador, Lemon. When she’s not reading mystery novels from the Golden Age era or writing poetry in the margins of her days, she can be found assisting her eldest daughter with last-minute baking projects, learning soccer skills from her youngest son, patiently listening to her middle daughter campaign for another dog, and drinking vats of tea to sustain her through it all.
You can find more of her writing at her website.
A Field Guide to Cultivating ~ Essentials to Cultivating a Whole Life, Rooted in Christ, and Flourishing in Fellowship
Enjoy our gift to you as our Welcome to Cultivating! Discover the purpose of The Cultivating Project, and how you might find a "What, you too?" experience here with this fellowship of makers!
Bethany… Again, your words themselves are full of kindness. You treat your subjects so deftly and yet with such tenderness… This one feels like a warm, knitted sweater wrapped around me. Thank you for the time you take to craft words so beautifully. It’s a pleasure to “triad” with you!