Moving Forward, Zigzag style

Preparations and plans can be tough, because you never really know if you’ve done enough. All the planning in the world cannot predict the outcome. There’s always unknown factors you cannot control. There are always things that you have to wait for, that you just won’t know until it’s here. You try to ‘zig’ forward, to find out that you’ve ‘zagged’ in another direction.

This is the place I find myself in; planning and planning, preparations and more preparations. The Mennonite World Conference Assembly, PA 2015, is less than three months away! I travel to Pennsylvania in two months! (Never mind that I’m getting married later this year… I can’t even get into that planning right now.)

Starting the blanket

We’re trying so hard to prepare and plan for everything that we’ll need to do for communications before, during and after the Assembly… and that’s a lot! I feel like my life currently revolves around planning; Skype meetings to review plans, email chains discussing plans, appendixes to plans, budgets, timing, resources, volunteers, and more. I can’t even count how many pages I’ve written, edited and discussed of planning documents.

I know this work is important and will help us all work better during all the activities in July, but sometimes I get home just exhausted from planning. It can be easy to think that I haven’t really done anything. Yes, planning is work, yet at the same time it’s preparing for the work that is yet to come. All these hours of work now, just so that we can work better later. I know I’ve gotten stuff done, but all there is to show for it are at most some documents of plans.

The first row done!

And so I get home, put on an English TV show on my computer, and pick up my crocheting. I’m making a zigzag blanket for a queen sized bed. I started it after I got in engaged and it will probably take me at least two years to finish it (I’m in no rush J). Still, even though the end is far away, it’s something that I can always see a tangible change in after I spend time on it.

I started this blanket in February and now in May it’s easy to seen it’s grown a lot. It’s far from perfect, and there are many imperfections (don’t look too close at the photos!). Still, working on this blanket gives me a contentment that I can’t find in other parts of my life right now. In the midst of planning, preparing, waiting for the unknown, for what I can only imagine, when I crochet my blanket I can see something that does move steadily forward.

First rows of each colour:
purple, white, blue

My zigzag blanket is one small thing that I can control. And the calming act of crocheting continually reminds me that for all these bigger things that are beyond me, the only way I can move forward is to take a deep breath, trusting my God who is always in control.

The blanket as of May 10