Giving away a rug and a hope

So, photos of crochet anyone? I’ve run a little out of steam lately, but am going to have a little holiday soon, which might restore it.

This is one of those posts I write that might make you all consider me a little crazy, but what are blogs for …

I actually made this crochet rug many many years ago. I made a similar one for a close friend’s baby, then made this one, and just put it away in the cupboard (the hope chest, the glory box …), thinking I would keep it for the day I had a baby of my own, and have since all but forgotten about it. I didn’t even think of it when my later niece and nephew were born, because they were born in Darwin or a Queensland summer, and were older when I made them rugs, and so it has just sat there in a zipped-up plastic bag all these years.

But I’ve dug it out to give it to this nephew that is coming. I couldn’t help feeling a kind of pang, like it’s the giving up of a hope. But isn’t that what we have to do with all hopes in any case? Is it Amy Carmichael or Elisabeth Elliot who writes most about how we must hold our hopes and dreams and plans in an open palm, not closing our fists around them, but trusting them to a God who withholds no good thing? Anyway, I’m not somehow superstitious about this actual rug, and I know giving it away won’t make it any more or less likely that I have a baby of my own. If God chooses to give me someone who wants to love and care for and share his life with me, and chooses to give us a baby, I can make another rug, and if God chooses not to, then nothing I do or don’t do or keep in the cupboard will make the least difference.

 In the meantime, this nephew might as well have the use of this rug.