QUILTS, STITCHING, AND STANDING STILL

I made a New Years' Resolution that within the next two years, I would like to make quilts for all fourteen of my grandchildren and my two great-grandchildren. When one reaches my age, one begins to wonder about his legacy. I began with my second granddaughter, as I explained in an earlier blog, because I couldn't think of one single personal item I had ever made for her. I'll return to a quilt for the oldest, Tobin when I begin making the couples' quilts. DeAnne's quilt top is complete and in the very capable hands of my neice, Janeen, who will do the quilting. It's shown on one of my earlier posts. Tonight, I completed Vale's quilt top. When I told Vale many months ago that I had this Grandkid Quilt Project planned, he said, "Okay, I'll start saving my old jeans." So he will have a jeans quilt made from Grandpa, Grandma, and Vale's old jeans. The quilt already weighs more than Vale does and doesn't even have a backing on it, but I really think he'll like it. His grandpa, who usually takes the appropriate interest in my projects, is quite taken with the jeans quilt. In my internet search for patterns and advice about making jeans quilts, the one constant was: A jeans quilt wears like iron! How fun. TJ's quilt is well begun. I'm now looking at girlie patterns for Harmony and Heather. It is a rewarding and fun project. In fact, my current Project prompted me to write the following talk which I gave in the Young Single Adult Ward a few Sundays ago. I just thought I'd share.


I have to confess to you that this has been a difficult talk to write. We’ve been on a mission, basically since December 2005. We’ve given many talks, lots and lots of lessons, and several firesides. You, or your counterparts in California, have heard every profound life experience I’ve ever had in my life and some of the not very profound experiences as well. I confess to a week of the famous “stupor of thought” which is spoken of in the scriptures.
I know that there are some of you who aren’t acquainted with us, and I think there are those who wonder why we show up for only a few of our meetings in this ward. We are the Kennedys, and our home is in White Salmon, Washington which is about 60 miles east of here in the Columbia River Gorge. In our other life, Elder Kennedy was a regional manager for Employment Security, and I was a high school special education teacher. We have six living children, all of whom are married or engaged, and all of whom are parents, even grandparents. We have fourteen grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. In December of 2005, we accepted a mission call to the San Diego Mission as Institute teachers at the LaJolla California Institute. Even before we left our mission in California in June of 2007, arrangements had been made for us to serve in the Gresham Institute as service missionaries. A service mission is set up so that a senior couple may live in their own home and serve as missionaries. So we teach two classes a week, spending all day in Portland at the Institute, and we attend several wards to support and mentor young single adults. So, when you see us come in late, it’s because we attend three wards on Sundays. Although our mission is considered part-time, we spend at least 40 hours a week on our mission because we’re having so much fun, and we feel so accepted here and respected.
At two am this morning, I awoke with this talk on my mind. I knew that I only had a few hours to get a talk together because I’m not very good at winging it. Elder Kennedy just grunted when I said I was going downstairs to work on my talk. His talk has been prepared for several days. Now, you’ll think I have a very weird way of preparing a talk. I went into my sewing room, turned the heat up high, wrapped my legs in a warm afghan, plumped the pillows in my rocking chair, propped my feet on my old stool, and sewed on a cross-stitch sampler that I’m making for my daughter. The only sound in the room was the ticking of my clock! For those of you who aren’t in the know, cross-stitch consists of making the same stitch, a small cross or x, over and over and over again on a cloth until you’ve worked those little x’s into a beautiful design. I’ve solved many of my greatest problems while I’ve stitched little x’s on a xstitch cloth or done some other type of handiwork. I worked on the sampler and I thought and prayed. I thought about many, many things and many, many people. I thought about all of you; I visualized you sitting in this room, and I asked myself, and the Lord, what you most needed to hear about from me on this day. Slowly, as I knew they would my thoughts began to form and coalesce, and a theme emerged.
As I sewed, a scripture came to my mind. It’s in 1 Samuel 9:27. Samuel, the prophet, is speaking to his impetuous student, Saul. He’s fed and sheltered Saul, and now he’s asked Saul to walk with him and a servant. After a while, Samuel said to Saul, "Bid the servant pass on before us, (and he passed on,) but stand thou still a while, that I may shew thee the word of God. What follows is the anointing of Saul as a prophet. The theme of my talk today is that very significant phrase: “stand thou still a while, that I may shew thee the word of God.”
My mother-in-law is 92 years old. She lives alone and is house bound. She’s outlived all her siblings, two husbands, many friends and relatives, one of her sons, and one of her grandchildren. She still goes to church, and she has some friends with whom she has family home evening. She keeps a journal which she’s done since 1962. She loves to read, and she fills her days with reading. She’s quite eclectic in her hobby; she reads scriptures, church books, and various and sundry novels with equal enjoyment. She keeps a large pile of books right by her favorite chair. In fact, she tells me that she panics if she’s read up all of the books she has before someone brings her more. She knows how to “stand still a while.”
I am the same way about sewing. Although my life is quite busy, I always have a sewing project to work on. I like several kinds of hand sewing, and, since we have a large family, there’s always someone with a birthday, a new baby, or a wedding or something for which I can make a gift. I remind myself of the Kleenex commercial where they haul in an old blue couch and place it on a busy street corner. A man sits on the couch with a box of Kleenex and people of all walks of life sit down with him and talk and many bare their hearts to him. When I sit and sew in public places, people feel free to sit down and talk to me, and I’ve heard some remarkable stories and shed many tears with those who sit and talk as I sew. I think I’ve given many people the opportunity to “stand still a while.”
Many, many years ago, I came to Portland for a school meeting. There was only myself and the agriculture teacher, who I found to be a crude talking man. He kept going on and on about “my” students—the special ed kids—who, he said, ought to be kept in cages behind the gym. I was so offended and angry that I couldn’t see straight, but none of my arguments seemed to alter what he was saying, so I just pulled out my sewing and ignored him. He grew very quiet. He stopped talking loudly, and he finally said, “Hey, I was just trying to get your goat. I love ‘your’ kids, don’t ya know? They’re my kids too. I love ‘em.” After that we had a pleasant time and even banded together to argue for “our kids’" rights at the workshop. After the meeting, I asked to be dropped off at the Burger King which used to be in Troutdale because my family would be coming in a few hours so we could watch our son participate in a church basketball tournament. I was doing some kind of sewing and not paying any attention to anyone around me when I heard a voice say, “Er you a school teacher? You look like a school teacher.” I looked up to see a massive black man sitting in a booth a few yards away from me. He was a truck driver, he told me, from New Jersey, and he was on his way to California. He told me all about his wife and family while I stitched away. Then he told me of the horrible loneliness that he experienced all the time when he was on the road. He explained that he was going to go buy himself some booze and a good woman to spend the night with. I kept on stitching, but I said, “Why don’t you go sightseeing instead? Portland’s a beautiful city.” He laughed and said, “It’s kind of hard to drive a semi over to some tourist spot, Lady.” Then, I said, “Why don’t you go back to the motel and write a long letter to your wife or give her a call? She’s probably as lonely as you are.” His face got very mushy, and he said, “I might just do that. Good luck with your sewing.” Maybe, just maybe I had helped him stand still a while.
I wonder how often you have time to stand still a while? You’re always so busy, and rightly so, with school and work and your social life that I imagine it’s not often that you’re able to do so. I see many of you sneaking out your cell phones during church or class to check to see if you have a phone call or a text message. I see you frantically filling up your life with activities. I’ve listened to many a young single adult who is very concerned about his future and wants to know what the Lord has in mind for him or her, while he’s frantically trying to fill up his social calendar.
During our full-time mission to California, we were mentors to a large single adult ward—550 members. It was a great ward, and there were always activities to fill everyone’s days and hours. If the ward itself hadn’t scheduled an activity on a given night, there was usually a beach party or a volleyball game or something springing up spontaneously. The ward was very generous in its service as well. Always something to do and someone to be with. I suspect that it’s the same way here. I suspect that the young Saul was caught up in the midst of such activity, and Samuel had to take him off away from the city to get his attention and ordain him a prophet. Remember the Robin Williams version of the movie “Peter Pan?” Robin Williams is the adult Peter Pan who has come back to Neverland to find his children, and he’s not recognized by the Lost Boys. There’s a very poignant scene where one of the Lost Boys takes Robin Williams’ face into his hands, looks deeply into Robin’s eyes and says, “Oh, there you are, Peter.”
There is a reason that Samuel wants Saul to stand still a while. He says: “that I may show thee the word of God.” I’m sure that President Monson would love to have all of us stand still so that he could teach us the word of God.
We have a son who is an excellent example of my point. Today, this son, Tom, is 29 years old and the father of two young sons. He’s happily married. Had anyone told me ten years ago that Tom would be where he is today, I wouldn’t have believed them. He’s always been an easy-going, give-you-the-shirt-off his back kind of guy. He doesn’t know a stranger. Everyone likes Tom. From the time he was in 7th grade, Tom was different from our other kids. He hung out with the druggies and skateboarders, and he was a poor student. Tom tells us that he took his first drink of alcohol at the age of twelve at the home of an inactive member and became addicted to alcohol and drugs shortly thereafter. We were very naïve parents, and we thought his problems stemmed from being attention deficit. One month short of high school graduation, he ran away from home. He bummed around, all over the country, continuing in his drug-filled life. He’d drop by the house every few months, saying he wanted to change his life, but he was really coming home to steal anything he could get his hands on so he could go out after drugs again. We bailed him out of a lot of bad situations over a period of about five years. About five years ago, he found himself in jail in Salt Lake City. He’d tried to cash a check which he’d stolen, and because we wouldn’t allow him to come home, he was put in jail. We had asked that he go through the drug rehab program at the jail. We felt that we could, maybe work with him, if he did, but he refused, so he was sentenced to a year in the county jail with the general population. For the first time in his life, Tom had to stand still a while. He could not con, wheedle, or whine to get his way. Mom and Dad could not bail him out. He had to dry out because he had no choice. He stood still long enough to be shown the word of God. After a week or two, when he’d gone through drug withdrawal, his cellmate began to talk to him about going to the small branch at the jail. He did. Would he like to go to Institute? Why not? Tom begged us for books, his scriptures. He read all four of the standard works a couple of times. He devoured anything by Neal Maxwell. He prayed with real intent, and, when he emerged from jail a year later, he had learned the word of God. About a year later, Tom married a girl that he’d met while on the road. They’re both recovering addicts, but they are doing very, very well. His wife isn’t a member, so Tom isn’t really active in the church, but he has a strong testimony.
I would like to close with a favorite little story: "When I was a little boy, my mother used to embroider a great deal. I would sit at her knee and look up from the floor and ask what she was doing. She informed me that she was embroidering. I told her that it looked like a mess from where I was. As from the underside I watched her work within the boundaries of the little round hoop that she held in her hand, I complained to her that it sure looked messy from where I sat.
She would smile at me, look down and gently say, 'My son, you go about your playing for a while, and when I am finished with my embroidering, I will put you on my knee and let you see it from my side.'
I would wonder why she was using some dark threads along with the bright ones and why they seemed so jumbled from my view. A few minutes would pass and then I would hear Mother's voice say, 'Son, come and sit on my knee.' This I did, only to be surprised and thrilled to see a beautiful flower or a sunset. I could not believe it because, from underneath, it looked so messy.
Then Mother would say to me, 'My son, from underneath it did look messy and jumbled, but you did not realize that there was a pre-drawn plan on the top. It was a design. I was only following it. Now look at it from my side, and you will see what I was doing.'
Many times through the years I have looked up to my Heavenly Father and said, 'Father, what are You doing?'
He has answered, 'I am embroidering your life.'
I say, 'But it looks like a mess to me. It seems so jumbled. The threads seem so dark. Why can't they all be bright?'
The Father seems to tell me, 'My child, you go about your business of doing My business, and one day I will bring you to Heaven and put you on My knee and you will see my plan for you from My side.' (Author Unknown)
In a CES talk some years ago, President Hinckley quoted some wonderful advice about standing still. He pulled from his pocket a newspaper article which he'd carried in his wallet for many years and read: "The fact is that most putts don't drop. Most beef is tough. Most children grow up to be just people. Most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration. Most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. Life is like an old-time rail journey--delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed.
The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride."

It is my prayer that in these few minutes, you’ve been inspired to “stand still a while.” Will stop trying to fill every second of every minute of every hour with activities—and I have as much reference to church activities as I do school and work and leisure activities, and give yourself time to ponder and be open to seeing the word of God. If you’d like to learn to xstitch, crochet, knit or quilt in order to achieve that goal, I am a willing teacher.
Standing Still, Mom