As most other creative people I know, I usually have more than one project going at a time and they tend to be in many different media.  Anyone who has ever read this blog (or knows me personally) knows that I like painting in oils.  I’ve done a little watercolor, but I really like oil paints.  I also love to cook and bake bread, knit, crochet, tat and spin wool.  I like to play with scissors and paper, too.  Maybe it’s because I’m surrounded by small children who also like to play with art supplies, but I have the sneaking suspicion that even if I didn’t have small children in the house, I’d still spend an awful lot of time playing with paints, yarn, glue, scissors and paper.

So, here I am on a rainy Saturday.  My hubby is going to be busy in town all day and one of my older daughters needed my car today because hers is in the shop.  I fully intended to sleep in this morning but no, I was wide awake at 5:45 a.m.  Rats!  For a night owl such as myself, this is not my idea of a great morning, although I did get to have breakfast with my honey before he had to scoot out the door.  That was good.

After he left, I had some time to drink my coffee in my favorite chair and read my bible a bit.  I thought about going back to bed, but with all the caffeine in my system, the little wiggle worm inside me waiting to be born was doing jumping jacks, so I figured going back to bed would be fairly pointless.  I decided to pick up my knitting.

I almost put it back down again.  I’m working on a really cute pair of gloves for myself, with lots of colors.  I made gloves for my whole family for Christmas and I’m finally working on a pair for myself.  I have discovered that the more colors you work with, the more tangled all of these separate balls of yarn become as you switch from color to color.  Last night, I worked with my glove project until the yarns were so tangled I couldn’t pull anything through the mess to knit with anymore.  It was time to untangle.

Untangling yarn is no fun.  Wool yarn wants to felt as the individul yarns slide past each other, making the tangle even worse.  It takes time and patience to figure out which way to unthread each strand of yarn through the knotted-up mess.  I have spent months working on these multi-colored fair isle glove designs, getting all caught up in the beauty of each design as it unfolds beneath my fingers – until the yarns get so knotted up that I am forced to stop and untangle everything.  My husband looked at my tangled-up mess last night and said, “That knot would drive me crazy.”

As I slowly worked out the knot this morning and then got on with my knitting, I realised something.  If I just took a minute to untangle the yarns at the end of every other row, or so, I would never have to deal with such a mess!  It’s wonderful how profound these things seem to be early in the morning.  If I could only discipline myself to stop, even though the pattern is unfolding and it’s getting exciting, and get things in order, I might actually get my project done more quickly.  Wow!  What a concept!  Oh, but how I hate to stop when I’m on a roll.

And now the philosophical part comes in.  What would happen if I took some time at the end of each day to untangle?  I mean, emotionally and spiritually?  It occurs to me that when things in my life get tangled, it’s not because I don’t have the time, so much, to get things untangled, but I haven’t used the time that I do have well and I’ve gotten caught up in something that I wanted to do more than take the time to straighten things out.  Things in life do get tangled up sometimes but I’m thinking that if I took some time to untangle before I get to the point where I am not functioning well, then when I get one of those days where I really DON’T have the time to sort it all out, at least I’m not starting out with a tangled-up mess already.  Those messy days might just be a lot easier to deal with!

I’m going to try to spend more time in prayer, getting things straight from God’s perspective, standing back from my emotions a little at the end of the day and being more objective.  God doesn’t mind if I pour out my tangled mess in front of Him.  He’s better at untangling than I am and He’s never left me alone to deal with my mess before.  He knows me better than I know myself.