Kaleidoscope ~ A Quilt for Eli

Jem arrived a bit sooner than I expected, so there are still a few projects on my "to-do" list that are unfinished.  That's OK - they weren't urgent anyway.  But I did finish one project the week before he was born: a quilt for Eli.  And I shouldn't say "I" - this quilt was a team effort!  Leah ironed multiple quilt blocks for me, and Willem, Marie, Nathan, and Eli pulled the paper off the back of the blocks (I sewed the strips on 8.5" x 8.5" pieces of scratch paper).  We made the quilt from fabric strips that I've been cutting and saving for several years.  Whenever I had a fabric remnant not big enough to do anything with, I would cut it into 1 1/2" - 2" wide strips and stash it away.  It was a fun project, and I have plenty of strips left to start a quilt for Sean E. sometime, too!  We named the quilt "Kaleidoscope," but we didn't come up with that title on our own - I saw a similar quilt online once, and we couldn't come up with a better name ourselves.  

Eli and me and his quilt front.

Leah and Eli and the quilt back - if they look a little chilly, snow flurries are falling while I take this picture!

One extra block - I sewed it on the back with this inscription: "For Eli - 'Kaleidoscope' - Spring '16 - Love, Mom."

A Jem for His Crown

If you had in your possession something very precious, would you loan it to someone who had repeatedly shown him or herself to be untrustworthy?  Likely not.  I wouldn’t, either.  Yet that’s what the Lord has done to B.J. and me.  Seven times over He’s entrusted us with His children.  How we are humbled when we consider our weaknesses and failures with regard to our ability and our commitment to raise them in the fear of His name!  But how we are comforted to know that He forgives our sins and equips us through His Holy Spirit and by His Word for this high calling!

Introducing…

Time to cut the cord.

First photo with Dad and Mom - too bad Dad has his eyes shut!  :-)

Lots of help with his first bath!

Happy siblings.

Second photo with Dad and Mom - too bad Mom has her eyes shut!  ;-)

Ready to go home.

We intend to call this little man “James” or “Jem” (J.E.M. also being his initials).  (Scout Finch had a Jem, and so did Anne Shirley.  I decided I’d like one, too.  ;-)

Photo shoot on the kitchen table.

Meanwhile...

Several people have asked us if we named James in honor of Jim Elliot, husband of the late Elisabeth Elliot.  No, not really, though it doesn’t bother us a bit that their names are the same.  You see, for the first three years of our marriage, I pretty much ceased reading anything that wasn’t a cookbook or a homemaking or pregnancy manual.  Just before Willem was born, we moved to the little Kramer acreage right around the corner from Dad and Mom, and I checked out Elisabeth Elliot’s Through Gates of Splendor.  Then came The Journals of Jim Elliot, Let Me Be a Woman, Passion and Purity, The Shaping of a Christian Family, Discipline: The Glad Surrender… 

I credit Elisabeth with ending my literary hiatus, necessary though it may have  been, with turning my focus from methods to principles.  Her and Jim Elliot’s devotion to the Lord was a much-needed wake-up call for me.  In the throes of midnight feedings and countless diaper changes I needed their encouragement to find my contentment in Him and to be thankful and fully present in the season of life in which I found myself: “Wherever you are, be all there.”  I told her so in a letter.  She responded via the pen of her third husband, Lars Gren, the one of whom she, having already buried two husbands, often said, “May he outlive me.”  The Almighty answered that prayer in the affirmative when Elisabeth passed through the gates of splendor last June, and again Lars responded to the sympathy card I sent him.  His note lies in the “treasure box” on my closet shelf along with his letter from several years before.

There’s not a book of Elisabeth’s from which I’ve not profited: she’s always pointed, always profound.   And with regard to our little James Elliot, when we look to the future, we can’t help but tremble.  It’s our prayer that he will grow up to be a man who is ready to give his very life for the sake of Christ’s kingdom.  After all, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”

When he's not taking advantage of his distracted mama by unwrapping every bar of soap in the bathroom or throwing thousands of Perler beads around the basement, Sean's pretty smitten with "Baby James."

Nathan is my big helper at home!  Here he is "reading" to James.

And when the day comes that the Lord makes up His jewels, it’s our earnest desire and our greatest ambition that this little Jem and his six siblings will be among them.  

Dear James - Mother's Day 2016

5-8-2016

Dear James,

Several years ago I started the tradition of writing each of my children a letter for Mother's Day.  (But last year I forgot and left them at everyone's breakfast seats one week late - there were enough tears that Mother's Day morning that I don't think I'll ever forget again!)  I didn't expect to be writing a letter to you yet this year, but here you are, and I want to tell you in writing how much I love you.  Still more - I want to tell you how great our God is. 

When I first learned that I was pregnant with you, I laughed, but as my discomforts grew, so did my doubts.  Many days, particularly in the last month or so, the fear in my heart prevailed over the faith.  Just a week or two ago I told your dad, "I am not capable of faithfully raising another child."  "No, you're not," he replied.  But He is able."  And Dad was - and is - right.  Our heavenly Father is abundantly able to do far more than we can ask or imagine.  Dr. Kenigsburg prayed at my last couple of clinic visits that you would come sooner rather than later.  I've never had a baby arrive before his or her due date...until you.  Before we went to the hospital I prayed over my contracting belly for patience, endurance, and pain tolerance.  God gave all those things, plus a labor that was over much sooner than I expected.  When I was disappointed that we would have to stay in the hospital for three whole days, I prayed for contentment with God's will in that, too, and He gave you and me three peaceful, pleasant days, the memory of which I cherish.

There will be many more - and greater - trials in the days ahead, little one resting in your sleeping Daddy's arms (across the bed from a wriggling Eli and a squirming Sean - they are responsible, by the way, for the unnecessary squiggles on this card... :-).  But when we belong to such a great God, we need not fear.  He knit you together in my womb (Ps. 139); He is the one who took you out of my womb (Ps. 71); and He will carry you and me even to our oldest age, when He will finally and fully deliver us and bring us Home (Ps. 46).

I love you, James Elliot.

Mom

(More pictures of our new addition forthcoming.  :-)