smiling {tapestry}

Interwoven.

Connected in unseen ways.  Unobserved and unknown, the fibers overlap and weave together.

I have firm conviction and expectant hope that when the day comes that I step into eternity, and arrive Home, part of my seeing clearly not only will be beholding my Father for the first time face to face, but will also involve a tapestry.

God is the Master weaver.  Threads of myriad color and hue, pattern and design, stretched thin or left thick with weft and warp.  My life overlapping your life entangled with that one who meets the threads of this person and is blessed by an occurrence of grace missed by eyes but seen with the heart.

It's intricate.

There's a lot of us.

And one day, I just know that I know I will stand and behold in complete wonder and utter awe my Lord who beautifully wove a masterpiece.

Two last night's ago, Emma Kate pulled from a big plastic box in her closet, a photo album.  In China, when we received her, we were given a number of things.  A plate.  A book recounting the history of the orphanage past to present day.  Art and school work.

We brought it home, went to doctor's appointments and dried tears when siblings went to school, folded laundry and emptied dishwashers, drove ice-slicked roads and decorated the Christmas tree.  The information from the orphanage didn't get forgotten.  And it wasn't yet examined closely.  Okay, or really at all.

The photo album.  Inside were photos of our dear Emma, most we have seen.  But then.  Heart stopping.  Two photos.  The youngest we have.  Dear, little Emma.  Held in a foreigner's arms at about 18 months old.  Face tear-soaked.  Tiny and perfect.  Lovely and little.  Two pictures of our Emma Kate as a younger older baby girl child.  Oh, the gift.

Pages turning.

For a long time, we've prayed for a family.  It is a family, we imagined, although it could have just been a person, who changed Emma Kate's life.  They changed her life because once a month they gave about $40 for Emma.  They are Emma's sponsor family.  Without them, Emma Kate never would have attended Love Without Boundaries Believe in Me school in her orphanage.  Without them, she would not have moved from the 10th percentile to the 50th in height and weight in a mere year.  Without them...I try not to imagine.

God has connected our families.  We don't know one another, and in many ways are strangers.  Yet His connections are so different than what we imagine or know of connectedness.

Pages turning, and a letter.

"Dear Emma...


Your Sponsored Family,
                                      "


And I gasp in wonder.  Because I actually do know who they are.  As in, a name and some email correspondence.  And all the prayers whispered.  The prayers of thanksgiving and gratefulness become named.  The gift I've had to send to a sponsor I know not, a token of our regard and a remembrance in keepsake form of their and our Emma, knows who to go to.

God weaves so beautifully.

And oddly enough, morning dawns and with it an email.

You know who it was from, now, don't you?

Yes.  Emma's sponsors.

Heaven smiled as my heart recognized a thread overlapped, lives enjoined.  The Master Weaver's hands fashion beauty and untwist threads knotted and twisted, to make patterns of beauty and strength.

Yesterday we beheld such glory.  And our hearts sang at the seeing.