Tangling the Threads

I have been crocheting since I was a child. For many years it was with yarn and a fat hook. Then it was with big balls of thread bought at Wal-Mart. Now I do it with finer thread from spools my sister buys in South America, using a hook whose point is as fine or finer than the lead on a pencil.

In recent months as I’ve stared at my hook sliding into a space between threads, grabbing a strand of thread and pulling it back through, I’ve not been able to escape the impression that what I was simply “tangling” the thread. Oh, I was tangling it in a very organized manner, but nevertheless I was mixing those threads in a way that one could consider to be “tangling.”

Sometimes I tangle them in a wrong way. When I do that, I end up pulling the strands of thread out, sometimes several rows. I fix the mistake and start “building” all over again. When that happens, it isn’t fun, but if I want a satisfactory result, or end product, it is necessary. Of course if I would follow the pattern more carefully in the first place, I could avoid having to pull things out and having to start over.

I imagine by now you have an idea where I am going with this. Tangled threads? Tangled strands? There had to be an analogy in there somewhere. As I lay awake in the wee hours of one morning recently, the analogy sorted its way through the fog.

As we humans live our lives, we are the ones doing the “crocheting.” If we follow the patterns set by our Creator in the Book He has given us, we can produce, or build, a life that is beautiful and useful. Being human, however, we often mess up. When we do, we need to back track, maybe undo, unravel, and start afresh.

That’s what happens to the main character in my Tangled Strands story. As my “tagline” puts it, “She tossed his love aside for a ride on a whirlwind—until her iridescent bubble burst in the storm.” What happens when she comes back, how she has to unravel, undo, and “rebuild,” makes up the bulk of the story.

I’m confident the story line and the crochet analogy will work well together. All I have to do is find effective ways to make that happen. I’m working on it!