Frogging in the New Year

A few years ago I began knitting a prayer shawl for my mom’s friend.  I was a little over halfway finished when the lady passed away from cancer.  A couple of weeks ago I was looking through the closet for some yarn and I came across the unfinished shawl.  I held it for a bit and pondered what to do with it.  I have had it on my heart to knit a prayer shawl for a lady I recently met.  On one hand, I had made more progress on this shawl than I had remembered and it shouldn’t take too long to finish, but to pick up and continue where I left off didn’t feel right. 

Later that evening, when everyone else had gone to bed, I sat on the couch still looking at the shawl and made the decision that if I was going to knit this for someone else, I needed to start over.  In knitting the process of unraveling your work is called “frogging” because you have to “rip it, rip it.”  It’s terribly punny.  For the next hour, sitting on the couch with the glow of the tree lights reflecting off the windows, I began frogging the shawl.

It was painful at first, seeing all of the work slowly disappearing.  After a little bit I began to watch the stitches disappear one at a time.  I began to notice the pattern, the yarn overs, the knit two togethers, the purls. I saw places where I had messed up the pattern and had to add a stitch at the end of a row.  I found where my first skein had run out and I had clumsily started a second.  Watching the unraveling of the knitted work was fascinating, because I could see all of the work that had gone into the project, the errors and the fixes.  I finished by rolling all of the yarn into a large ball and sat there for several minutes just staring at the big ball of potential.  I was eager to get started, to learn from the mistakes I made the first time, and to watch the shawl rebuild.

I began to think about how each New Year is like a large ball of yarn and potential.  We spend the final days of the year unraveling the decisions of the last year.  We consider our triumphs, our defeats, our moments of joy and those of heartache.  We wind it all up into a large ball determined to do something different or better or healthier with the New Year. 

It is no secret that 2017 has been a difficult year for our family.  It started with the loss of a friend in March, many illnesses, hospital and inpatient stays, surgeries, unwise counsel, and disappointments.   It would be easy to unravel all of this year and set that ball of yarn on fire.  I’m pretty sure it would be super flammable, so it might even be bring some satisfaction to watch it burn… 

But what I realized staring at this large ball of yarn was that if I just wrote off 2017, I would lose all of the lessons that I learned from the following year and the potential to go into 2018 more prepared.  So instead of rehashing all of the difficulties that our family has walked through, I want to share some of what I see as I unravel the year.

I have learned to be more present and to let myself feel pain.  I am learning that I don’t have to silver line every single cloud and that “just because it burns doesn’t mean you’re gonna die.”  I have learned to be bolder and braver.  I am learning how to fight for myself and others.   I have learned that even in the hardest moments, there is peace.  I have learned that I am stronger than I ever knew that I was.  And I have been reminded that I am so blessed by my family and friends that God has surrounded us with. 

So as I sit here in the final hours of this year, I’m now holding a large ball wound up of the yarn from 2017 ready to make something beautiful of 2018.  It doesn’t mean that there won’t be hardships, disappointments, or mourning.   I can’t imagine a year without them.  But I am now more confident that those things shape us and mold us into stronger people and that those hard moments are surrounded by moments of great joy.  So here’s to 2018.  May it be a masterpiece!