Wedding Letter

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Sanchez,

This quilt is my gift for you on your wedding day. It isn’t perfect. It might be the wrong colors. It’s definitely tested my faith and perseverance, but I give it to you in the hopes that you will warm yourselves beneath it and know that you are loved.

No one sets out to make an ugly quilt, just like no one begins a marriage planning for it to be difficult and ugly. No, a quilter spends time carefully designing the pattern, selecting just the right fabrics to best express it, expects a masterpiece and begins cutting the pieces with a little fear and trepidation. What if I cut it the wrong size? What if I didn’t plan the right amount of fabric for that part of the pattern and I run out before I’m through? What if I hate it when I’m finished? Making a quilt is remarkably like making a marriage. We plan; we prepare; we hope and pray.

Sometimes a piece is cut a little small, so we finesse by carefully stitching the narrowest of seams. Sometimes a block comes out lopsided or too long on one corner, and again we twist and turn and force the block into the proper shape and slice off the part that doesn’t matter. Your marriage will have those places where there’s just not enough time or money or patience. You will have to work hard to keep yourselves stitched together even though there’s barely enough love there to hold on to. But you will hold on. You can do it. Sometimes one of you will seem more important than the other and your marriage will feel lopsided and off-kilter. Then you will have to stop to see if you’ve allowed something or someone to become more important than the two of you together. Sometimes you might have to slice off a part of your lives that, in retrospect, really isn’t as important as you thought because what’s important are that you two stay one.

Piecing the top of the quilt is fun. Arranging the lovely colors, watching the pattern develop, anticipating the next section as the quilt grows from one block to a whole quilt top. You are in the piecing stage of your marriage now. What a wonderful time you have ahead of you! You’ll discover bright new dimensions between the two of you as you join together. Life will seem more full of color and vibrancy. You’ll delight in each new day. Marriage will seem easy. And that’s the way it should be.

But, I’m sorry, but there will come times when you step back and look at your lives and realize that one of the blocks is upside down or the colors clash and the whole pattern is in disarray. And you’ll have to do what every quilter has done: rip out the seams and start over. You’ll do this because it matters, because your marriage is too important to leave the wrong piece there messing up the whole top. It will be hard. It will hurt to see the good parts tear away from the bad, but you will do it because your life, your marriage is worth it. Then you will turn the block around, put it into its rightful place and sew it all back together. And it will be more beautiful than you ever expected.

A quilt is more than the beautiful patchwork on top. There’s a layer of batting sandwiched between it and the solid backing fabric. All three parts are important. The batting adds warmth and fullness. The backing fabric is smooth and soft against those who snuggle underneath it. You will also add parts to your lives together. Brothers, sisters, parents...and eventually children. You will all be sandwiched together, stuck to one another because you are family. In a quilt, what holds that sandwich together are the quilting stitches. We all want perfectly even, consistent quilting stitches that glide from one side of the quilt to the other. What we often get are stitches of uneven lengths with gaps at places or stitches which suddenly bunch up leaving an ugly mess. Quilters use tiny, sharp scissors to carefully trim away the bad stitches and then replace those with better ones. The way to avoid messes like this is to watch carefully. Watch where you’ve been. Watch where you’re going. Stitch slowly enough that you can catch yourself before you’ve made a mistake, but keep going stitch after stitch after stitch.

Then when the top is finished and the quilting is done all that’s left to do is the binding. Binding is a thin strip of hand-sewn, folded fabric that wraps around the edge of the entire quilt. The binding seals the quilt together. What will bind your marriage together? The two of you love the Lord. We’ve seen that already in your lives. The faith that you share, the love that you have for Him will hold all the parts of your lives and your marriage together.

Colossians 3 says “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must forgive. And above all these, put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony. (Colosians 3:12-14.)

Love to you both,

Jane Ellen Smith

October 12, 2013