Do you remember a few weeks ago I wrote about the sweater I was working on? I’m still working on it. I’d love to say it has gone swimmingly. When I started working on it, I was asking advice from Jen, my good friend who knits. The response Jen gave me the most was “there is no wrong way to knit.”
Not long after my last post, having completed dozens of what should have been identical rows, I decided to count my stitches to make sure I was still on the right track. I discovered I had several stitches too many on one arm. I put the sweater down for a moment and really thought about my options. It would have been impractical to try to count every stitch in every row until I figured out where the stitches got added. I was too far along to pull everything out and start over. I decided to just keep going, decreasing my stitches over the next few rows until I was back to the right number.
I texted Jen and said “remember when you told me there was no wrong way to knit? Challenge accepted. Here’s what happened …” Her first response was “LOL.” Then after a few moments of typing bubbles at the bottom of my messages, she sent, “you didn’t knit wrong. You Leveled Up. That is exactly what a knitter who has knitted for years would have done.”
Whoa. The sense of relief I felt was palpable. I had accepted that, while I was going to finish the sweater, it was going to be unwearable. But Jen helped me realize it was never going to be perfect. Accepting the mistakes and working to move forward from them is just part of the process.
Have you ever felt that same panic when you realized you made a mistake? We worry that our flaws—our impatience, our hasty words, or the times we’ve simply "gotten it wrong"—render ourselves “unwearable.” We try to live perfectly, fearing that extra stitch (or stitches) will be the only thing anyone sees.
But the truth of our faith is much like Jen’s advice: there is no “wrong” way to be a child of God. We are not expected to be perfect patterns; we are created to be loved in the midst of our complexity. God doesn't wait for us to unravel our mistakes and start over before extending grace. Instead, God takes our dropped stitches, our knots, and our uneven rows, and weaves them into something complete, whole, and beautiful. Our quirks are not defects; they are the unique textures of a life lived in faith. When we stumble, we aren’t failing—we are leveling up. We are learning that grace is not about the absence of mistakes, but the courage to keep knitting forward, trusting that we are held, loved, and redeemed exactly as we are.
Yours in the Journey,
John Johns, Music Director