CO 4, K2, YO, K to end of row, Rep for Inc sections. To dec, K1, K2tog, YO, K2tog, K to end of row, Rep for rem of rows...., BO

I've been doing a lot of knitting lately...crazy, I know. I've really been enjoying it! I figured since I'm not in school anymore and don't have a time-consuming career, I should take up a hobby! I started knitting a couple years ago...my sisters-in-law tried to teach me. I let it go, though, because I was so busy with school. My friend Julie came over a couple weeks ago and was showing me some crocheting. It was fun, but I realized that I liked knitting better, so I went back to that and started to re-learn. I've just been practicing stitches, learning the basics, and doing little projects like coasters to get the hang of it.


I tried my first pattern last night...called corner to corner. It makes a really nifty decorative border, and it turned out great! That's the picture of it above. =]

As I've been knitting, I've been following a metaphor with my mind throughout the whole process. The thought dawned on me in the very beginning when I was having trouble with the stitches, and then I just continued to let it play out as I kept knitting these past 2 weeks. As I knitted, my mind kept flashing back to the well-known verse in Psalms 139..."You KNIT me together in my mother's womb." At first I was like, "awww that's nice." But then I really started pondering it, so much so, that whatever I did while I knitted, I tried to relate it to that verse.

It's interesting how when you discover the meaning of a word in its entirety, the verse as a whole has a total new meaning. Before I started knitting, I would read that verse and think, "that's so cool...God put me together, He knows me, He made me, I am His." But now...WOW. That's not all...He KNIT me together! What's so cool about this?

When you're knitting, you have to be exact. If you knit too tightly, it's impossible to get the loops off of the needle to make the stitches. If you knit too loosely, the stitches don't look as nice in the end. If you don't keep the exact same motion each time you make a stitch, all of the stitches will be asymmetrical and won't form a nice product. If you're not very careful, stitches can get slipped and lost forever, and it's a pain to try to get them back! (at least for me, since I'm a beginner).

And like the coaster I made above, I followed a pattern (listed as the title of this blog). When you're following patterns, you have to be even more exact, careful, precise, etc. If I didn't follow that pattern exactly as it said, I wouldn't have gotten the same finished product as pictured. And what is really cool, is that each specific pattern creates a completely different design/finished product! As long as you follow a pattern exactly, the product turns out perfect...but if you mess up and don't follow the pattern, UH OH! There are so many different patterns out there....way too many to even begin to count.

When you knit, you knit with a purpose in mind, a pattern at hand, and a specific end product as a goal. That's how God knit us...except for He didn't have to follow a pattern. He made up His own pattern for each and every one of us. Not one of us is alike. We are all unique. He knit every single person differently. And he knit with a purpose, with specificity, with something in mind. However, whoever, whatever He made us...He made us that way for a reason. This speaks volumes to girls....we struggle so much with trying to compare ourselves to how the media portrays beautiful. We hate ourselves, can't see ourselves as beautiful in the slightest, pick out all of our flaws, deny our Creator His satisfaction and delight in making us exactly how He wanted us to be, and try to change ourselves to conform to the world's standards of beauty. We are to REVEL in our creation! God made us, He delights in us, He loves us. We were made with a purpose. We were made to GLORIFY God with our minds, souls, hearts, and bodies! He doesn't want us to reject ourselves in disgust. He wants us to be thankful for creating us the way He has. We are made in the image of God. We are insulting God and His creativity when we insult ourselves.

That verse is specifically talking about our inner selves, if you read it in context...."For you created my INMOST being; you knit me together in my mother's womb." (Psalm 139:13) But God also knit our bodies together with purpose....look at Job 10:11..."You have clothed me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews." And even in Psalms 139, it talks about our bodies as you read on in that chapter...."My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in the secret place....When I was woven together....Your eyes saw my unformed body..." AMAZING! God KNITTED us, every part of us...innermost and outermost...He did it, and we should "praise Him because I am fearfully and wonderfully made! Your works are WONDERFUL, I know that full well..." (139: 14).

I really struggle with self-image, and loathing myself. I could go on and on about the media's portrayal of girls, and how it is forever wrong. I could talk of how in nature, the beautiful and attractive female is not the smallest 80 lb annorexic female who is skin and bones and never eats...the females that the males go for are the BIGGEST...because it demonstrates reproductive ability. I could talk of how the most famous paintings throughout history of naked women are women who would be considered disgusting and huge in today's world. The bottom line is that the world today, especially Hollywood in the United States of America, has deceived girls into thinking they should be a certain way when they absolutely should not. This is not to say that we shouldnt' be healthy, and exercise, and eat right...for our bodies are definitely temples of the Lord and we should treat it so....but we shouldn't be competing with what we see in the media. That is not real beauty, that is not what God wanted for us as women. (Not to mention it's all air brushed and fake anyways). One thing I read in a book a couple years ago, and it has plagued me ever since is this: You must ask yourself if your obsession with hating yourself and thinking you're ugly and rejecting your body is actually becoming an idol. Of course you might say, "how is hating myself being an idol? It's not like I love myself." Well, when you become so obsessed with youself, to the point where you're always looking in the mirror and despising who you are, and thinking constantly of it...it does in fact become an idol, because it takes precedence over worshipping God. It gets in the way of delighting in the Lord. You become so obsessed with it, that you can't even find room or time to praise the Lord anymore. I'm speaking from experience here. When I realized that...that I was idolizing MYSELF over God, my attitude really started to change. I still struggle with it a lot, but keeping that in mind helps. I want to praise God, rejoice in my creation, love Him for making me exactly how He wanted me to be! And reveling in your creation and enjoying who you are and how God made you is not forbidden....we are not called to reject ourselves. We are called to DENY ourselves for Christ, so that He can take over our lives. And we must deny our constant focus on our rejection of ourselves and comparison to other girls. We must focus on Christ inhabiting our bodies, throwing off the flesh, letting Him plant fruit from the inside out and radiate the fragrance of Christ and beauty of the Holy Spirit! God gives us a definition of true beauty and how He made us as women...

Real beauty is this...

"Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised!" (Proverbs 31:30

"I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God." (1 Timothy 2:9-10)

"Your beauty should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful." (1 Peter 3: 3-5)

So women, let's embrace our beauty, our worth, our perfectly knit together inner and outer beings. Let's rejoice in who God has made us to be! Let's not insult God any longer with hating ourselves, comparing ourselves to others, and rejecting who we are in Christ. If God delights in us, we should delight in our creation as well! And He DOES delight in us...

"The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take GREAT DELIGHT in you, He will quiet you with His LOVE, He will REJOICE over you with singing." (Zephaniah 3:17)

The bottom line.....God knit us with a vision in mind. I will let that truth resound in my heart and mind every time I try to hate who I am...

To be continued.....the biblical metaphor of knitting, part 2, next time....