Thimble Enough – Thankful Thursday

You never know just what’s going to be useful in your life. I’ve used the sewing skills my mom insisted all of us learn (boys and girls) to mend my clothes, sew buttons back on pants, shirts, coats and sweaters. Put zippers in, design Halloween costumes, work on wedding clothes, decorations, mittens for a duck’s feet when she had infects wounds on them and wouldn’t stay off her feet (our first duck was a very stubborn creature) and now I’m using them to sew old feed bags together to make a tarp for the back of the truck.

Incidentally, I am also incredibly thankful for a thimble, because I shudder to think about the state of my fingers without that thimble.

Thanks, Mom, for being more stubborn than seven of your eight children when it came to learning how to hand sew simple stitches. (My youngest brother just went and hid and Mom had two jobs to get to and didn’t have the time to chase her youngest down to make him learn what the other seven already knew and he just wouldn’t learn it from the rest of us. He is ruing that now when the buttons on his clothes wear off and he has to wait to bring it to one of our houses to sew back on. My eldest brother was incredibly thankful all throughout his mission that he’d stuck out the sewing lessons and even knew how to use the sewing machines that the church members in his branch let him borrow.)

Check out the original Thankful Thursday.  (I will update the link when this week’s original post goes up.)

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Will You Listen?

There are all kinds of secrets

Found throughout the day:

Dishes not wash all the way,

Television on before dressed for the bus,

Brownies made and cleaned up after.

 

(Not everything is too much.)

 

Good secrets come and go,

Bad secrets like to crop up as well:

Homework hidden and not done,

People pushing things under the rug;

Ignore it enough, it’ll go away?

 

(No it won’t.)

 

Bad secrets aren’t the only ones hiding,

Good secrets jump out and brighten your life:

Kittens brought home when you needed a friend,

A first attempt at a child’s sewing gifted, made by hand.

Someone coming over just because, but managing to bring just what you needed.

 

(Woken up at night, given what you need to work from home.)

 

Secrets like to lurk and hide,

They like to make you stumble and your eyes go wide,

But at the same time, they can be quiet and sneak up on you.

A child waking their mother at night,

Seeking peace to sleep by talking something out.

“I’m always here if you need me, if only to talk it out.”

 

(She didn’t mind how late it was or that she had work in three hours.)

 

Families can be loud with their secrets,

Shouting them out and using the bright lights to distract

From the shadows lurking beneath.

They can also be quiet,

Barely whispering about the teeth and the heartbreak.

 

(Just because ‘everyone knows’ doesn’t mean that they understand.)

 

But will you listen as I speak my words?

Will you keep quiet to hear all that is in me?

My secrets are my own to share or silence,

But will you listen to them all the same?

Secrets can choke you, both good and bad, if you cannot tell anyone.

 

(Oh Lord, I pray, listen to my heart as well as my mouth.)

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Written for this week’s Dungeon Prompts: http://theseekersdungeon.com/2014/03/13/dungeon-prompts-season-2-week-11-secrets/

Partially prompted by a few things coming to light this morning: the children didn’t quite finish getting ready for school and one almost missed the bus, but they’d made brownies after everyone had gone to bed and yet had managed to clean up (almost) completely after themselves. This morning really needed those brownies.