I heart Where Women Create.  They are super wonderful people that Jo and Paige!  Right now, they have the {the 12 Days of Christmas} giveaways going and they are spectacular!  You might even find a little something from yours truly…you will NOT regret visiting over there.  Go ahead.  Go now.  I’ll wait.  Then you can come back and finish reading this post.  Go on now…click on the photo below.

Oh good!  You DID come back!

Well, contrary to popular belief, not everyone IS a winner.  I mean, there are a lot of great prizes going on over there at WWC but not everybody is gonna win.  To offer a little something sweet for everybody who is still crafting and working on gifts for yourself of course, or others – enjoy some Two Peas inspiration and 20% off my sewing patterns in my etsy shop until December 20th.  Just enter the coupon code {sweettreat}.

And until December 9th, you can still enter my giveaway for the scarflette kit from this post. While writing that post, it made me reflect back a year ago when I was first making my patchwork scarves.  I loved rereading that post.  I thought you might too.  It just felt good to remind myself.  Here’s is an edited version from January 2010:

Funny thing this whole faith thing, isn’t it?  I mean, for those of you that believe in a higher power, whatever it may be, do you ever get those moments when you just go…”Ohh, freaky?!”.

 

And by that I mean, a message just seems to totally stick in your head and motivate you?

I thought that for Monday, I would blog about how cold it’s been, how I just can’t seem to warm up and how I made myself this scarf.

And I started to plot out a few quick instructions I would share on the scarf so you could make one too.  Plotting as I woke this morning and got everyone up and going.  And then, as we always do, we headed off for church.

I totally love our worship service.  I grew up in a very traditional church where our service was the same most Sundays.  And my current church still offers that however, we opt to go to the contemporary service.  For one, my kids are in sunday school and so this is the service we can go to after their class.  Second, our dear close friends happen to be the worship band leaders.  And they totally rock.

And this Sunday, there were little video snippets that played before church began.  No music.  Just text. Asking if we were really “here”.  What were we “hoping for”?  Hoping the service didn’t go long?  Hoping to go home soon to eat lunch?  Hoping to sit back and just observe?  It was honest and uncomfortable.

Every Sunday, it’s like this.  Something that stops you and grabs your attention and brings you for a moment into clear focus about why – just WHY we are sitting there in church.

And every Sunday, it’s the same.  I’m hoping to get out of there soon.  Hoping the baby will sit still enough for me to grasp part of the sermon.  Hoping to go get a coke soon and hoping to get home and sew in the afternoon.  So much to do before the week starts.

And every Sunday, most Sundays, it’s something like that first message – am I REALLY HERE - that makes everything around me disappear, makes my eyes focus on the cross, brings tears to my eyes and makes me remember what has been given to ME so I can have children, lunch, a sewing machine, a big glass of coke…a life.

Much of today’s sermon was focused on doing what we’ve been asked and doing it when we are too comfortable.

Too comfortable in our chairs to get up and share a message with someone who really needs it today.

Too comfortable to not just write a check for money but to go out and give of our time.

Getting uncomfortable.  Doing things that are hard.  Doing things we’d probably rather not do but then again, hey, I’m pretty sure Jesus wasn’t very “comfortable” dying on the cross but He did it anyway…for me, for you – for all of us.  And asks us to just do one little thing.  Tell others about Him.

Google this.  Jeremiah 1:4-10.

And it’s not comfortable for me to do that.  Because people come here from all over the place and from lots of different perspectives.  Different religions.  Or no religion at all.  Everybody has a journey that led them to where they are.  And this is mine and I’m doing what I feel that I’m called to do.  I hope you’ll allow me to do that now and again with you and I’d love for you to do that with me as well, with all of us.

Sharing faith can be very hard.  Uncomfortable.  Is this really the right forum?  Should I talk about this here?

Of course I should.  Of course you should.  Of course this is the right forum.

Which is why I thought when I wanted to write about how cold I’ve been – how I can’t seem to get warm lately because of our freezing temperatures – how “uncomfortable” I’ve been in my sewing room (I even talked about this at my sewing class last Friday!) – that today’s message and my message – seemed to have a purpose.  Right?

xoxo,

Trish