I haven’t painted since January.

For someone who has spent much of her life creating, that feels almost strange to say. Art has always been part of me. I learned to paint when I was young, along with sewing, crocheting, knitting, and weaving. Creating things with my hands was simply part of childhood, and those skills followed me into adulthood.

But sometimes life becomes so full that even the things we love get pushed aside.

And this year has been full.

There has been grief. There has been caregiving. There have been enormous changes. There has been a move, a new home, appointments, responsibilities, ministry, and now the beautiful chaos of raising three very young little girls all at once. My life has been blessed tremendously, but blessings don’t necessarily arrive quietly. Sometimes they come running through the house, laughing and crying and needing snacks and baths and bedtime stories. 😂

Somewhere along the way, my paintbrushes simply stopped making it out.

Painting asks something of me that I haven’t had much to give lately. I need time. I need space. I need enough mental quiet to think about color and composition and what I want a blank canvas to become.

But weaving is different.

I already know how to weave. My hands remember.

And lately I have found myself incredibly thankful to God for weekends at my country home and for those occasional evenings when the children are finally tucked into bed and I can steal away to my building for a little while.

There isn’t anything particularly dramatic about what happens there.

I sit down.

I pick up the yarn.

And I weave.

Over. Under. Over. Under.

Pull the strand through.

Straighten the row.

Then do it again.

And again.

And again.

I’ve jokingly begun thinking of it as stress weaving, but there is actually something much deeper happening in those quiet moments.

After days when my mind has been required to think about seemingly everything at once, my hands are suddenly given one simple thing to do.

There are no complicated decisions.

Nobody needs an answer.

Nobody is calling my name.

There is only the loom, the yarn, the repetitive movement of my hands—and God.

So I weave and I pray.

Sometimes there are words. Sometimes there aren’t many.

Sometimes sitting quietly in His presence is prayer enough.

And slowly I can feel something inside me becoming still.

When Your Hands Remember How to Be Still

There is something wonderfully grounding about repetitive handiwork. Long before we carried tiny computers everywhere we went or lived surrounded by notifications and constant stimulation, human beings spent enormous portions of their lives making things with their hands.

We spun.

We wove.

We kneaded bread.

We carved wood.

We stitched clothing.

We tended gardens.

Our hands moved rhythmically while our minds were allowed room to wander, think, pray, grieve, remember and rest.

I think perhaps we have lost something in our hurry to make everything faster.

When your nervous system has spent too much time expecting the next problem, stillness isn’t always as simple as sitting in a chair and telling yourself to relax. Sometimes my body seems to need a bridge between doing and being still.

For me, lately, that bridge has been weaving.

My hands are occupied enough that they aren’t restless, but not so occupied that my mind has to concentrate intensely.

And somewhere between one strand and the next, I find myself breathing a little more slowly.

Thinking a little less urgently.

Praying a little more naturally.

Perhaps this is one reason God gave us creativity in the first place.

Not merely so that we could make beautiful things, but because sometimes the making of something beautiful does something beautiful within us.

An Old Art in a New Season

The interesting thing is that weaving itself isn’t new to me.

I learned it as a little girl.

Back then, of course, I wasn’t thinking about nervous systems or trauma or the spiritual significance of repetitive motion. I was simply learning how to make things.

I couldn’t have known that decades later those same movements would return to me during an extraordinarily complicated season of life.

That’s something I find beautiful about the arts.

We learn a skill for one reason and discover years later that God can use it for another.

The little girl learning to pass thread through a loom couldn’t possibly have understood everything the woman she would become would eventually carry.

But perhaps God did.

And lately that thought has become even more meaningful to me because there is another tapestry weaving its way—quite literally—through our home.

The Song I Keep Hearing

Three years ago, I invested in Angel Studios’ David.

At the time, I certainly didn’t know that when the movie eventually became part of my life, I would have three little girls in my home who absolutely adore it.

But I do.

And they love music.

Which means our house currently has its own unofficial soundtrack. 😂

One of the songs I hear repeatedly is “Tapestry.” Its message is about the strands of our lives intersecting according to a design that the Creator can see even when we cannot.

And there I am…

…hearing about a tapestry while sitting at a loom.

That has stayed with me.

Because when I look at the strands of my own life, I don’t know that I could have connected them either.

There are beautiful strands.

There are heartbreaking ones.

There are years of waiting.

There is caregiving.

There is loss.

There are prayers that seemed to go unanswered.

There are prayers that were answered in ways I never expected.

There is a country home.

There is a new home closer to the city.

There are three little girls whose laughter now fills rooms that once didn’t belong to them—or to me.

And there is this strange, beautiful season in which I am exhausted beyond words some days and simultaneously looking around thinking,

God, how did You do this?

How did all of these threads end up here?

The View From the Loom

Maybe that’s why weaving has become such an appropriate metaphor for me.

When I hold a strand of yarn in my hand, that strand doesn’t look particularly impressive.

It’s just yarn.

But I know something the strand doesn’t.

I know where I’m putting it.

I can see the threads already stretched across the loom. I can see where this particular color needs to cross another. I know why one strand goes over while another goes under.

And slowly—almost imperceptibly—the individual threads stop looking like individual threads.

They become fabric.

Scripture uses remarkably similar imagery:

“For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.” — Psalm 139:13 (KJV)

Other translations express that final thought as God having knit or woven us together.

I love that imagery.

Because perhaps from where I am sitting, I can only see individual threads.

God sees the tapestry.

There have been plenty of threads in my life that I would have gladly removed if I had been given the opportunity. There are things I still don’t understand. There are losses I would never call good simply because God has brought good things afterward.

Faith doesn’t require me to pretend painful things weren’t painful.

It asks something different.

It asks whether I can trust the Weaver when I cannot yet see the pattern.

The Art Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect

There’s another lesson sitting on my little loom.

Look closely at my weaving and you’ll discover that it isn’t perfect.

Neither am I.

And that’s rather the point.

This isn’t something I’m creating for a gallery. I’m not trying to prove anything. There isn’t a deadline, an audience waiting for it, or a standard it has to meet.

I’m simply making something.

That freedom matters.

We live in a strange age in which even hobbies can become performances. We photograph them, post them, compare them, monetize them and sometimes accidentally turn the very things that were supposed to help us rest into another measure of productivity.

Healing art doesn’t need to do that.

You don’t have to be a painter to paint.

You don’t have to be a musician to sing.

You don’t have to sell your crochet.

You don’t need an Etsy shop because you learned to sew.

And your little woven piece doesn’t have to be worthy of hanging in a museum.

Sometimes the person being created while you create is more important than the thing you are making.

Find Your Own Loom

Your “loom” may not look anything like mine.

Maybe your hands find peace in a garden.

Maybe you crochet.

Maybe you bake bread.

Maybe you sketch.

Maybe you play the piano after everyone else has gone to bed.

Maybe you work with clay, restore old furniture, arrange flowers, quilt, embroider, write poetry or sit on the porch with a coloring book.

The particular art isn’t the important part.

The invitation is to find something that allows your hands to slow down enough for your soul to catch up.

And when you do, perhaps don’t fill every quiet moment with another podcast, another video, another notification or another voice.

Leave a little room for God.

Let the repetition become prayer.

One stitch.

One brushstroke.

One note.

One strand at a time.

Still on the Loom

My tapestry isn’t finished.

Neither is this season of my life.

There are still loose threads. There are questions I cannot answer. There are things happening around me that I cannot control, and there are undoubtedly parts of the pattern that I won’t understand until much farther down the road.

But tonight—or perhaps this weekend back at my country home—I may find myself sitting before that little loom again.

I’ll pick up another strand.

Over.

Under.

Over.

Under.

I’ll straighten the row.

I’ll whisper whatever is on my heart to God.

And I’ll remember that I don’t have to see the entire pattern from where I’m sitting.

I only have to remain willing to place the next strand into His hands.

Because any tapestry worth making takes time.

And so does healing. 🧶❤️

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If Stress Weaving brought you a little peace today, encouraged you in your own healing journey, or simply reminded you to slow down and make room for God in the middle of life’s beautiful chaos, consider buying me a coffee. ☕ Your tips help support Country Girl Gone City and give me the opportunity to keep writing, creating, and sharing these little pieces of my heart with you. Every cup is a small way of saying, “Keep creating—I’m listening.” And I am truly grateful for every one. ❤️