My First Stitches

It began, fittingly, with a move. I was thirteen—almost fourteen—when my father received orders to Whidbey Island, Washington, to serve as chaplain at the naval air station. My sisters had already left home, so for the first time it was just my parents and me. I was fresh from months in a naval hospital, recovering from gangrene in my ankle, and facing yet another reconstructive surgery. I was anxious about starting high school, about walking with a limp I could no longer hide, about beginning again in a place where no one knew my story.
Not long after we arrived, we were invited to dinner with my father’s new commanding chaplain, Chaplain Peters, and his wife. They were a curious pair—brusque but kind, the sort of people whose warmth you had to listen for beneath the dry humor. At some point that evening, Mrs. Peters turned to me and asked how I passed the long hours of recovery. “Do you read? Crossword puzzles? Knit?”
I laughed. “Much to my parents’ dismay, I watch soap operas. And I read.”
Without another word she stood, crossed the room, and came back with a canvas tote from beside her chair. “Here’s something you might consider,” she said. Inside was a half-finished cross-stitch of a little Precious Moments girl with a goose that read, Make a joyful noise. “It helps the time pass in the evening.”
That night she taught me how to cross-stitch—how to count threads, follow a chart, keep the crosses facing one direction, and make the back of the fabric as neat as the front. “Have patience,” she told me. “This isn’t about instant satisfaction. It’s about the process—watching the picture take shape. Concentrate on the stitch you’re in. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
My mother came back into the room and said kindly, “That will be a nice craft to keep you busy.”
Mrs. Peters smiled but corrected her gently. “This isn’t just a craft. It’s an art.”
That was the first lesson I ever stitched. I finished my first piece—a little girl in a graduation gown—and gave it to my sister Sharon when she graduated high school. After that came lighthouses, cottages, verses, birth announcements. Every design marked a season of my life. And when surgeries came again, as they always did, my needle came too.
In the hospital, while my body healed, my hands worked. I’d wait for the day I could sit up and feel the thread glide through linen, proof that something in me still functioned. Nurses and therapists began stopping by to see my progress, promising to check back before discharge. When pain blurred the edges of reality, the steady rhythm of tiny X’s gave me order, focus, and peace. Stitching became my companion—the tangible reminder that creation was still possible, even in rooms built for repair.
Looking back, I can see that night with Mrs. Peters as one of my father’s “pivotal moments.” A small, ordinary evening that rerouted something essential inside me. Through thread and fabric, God handed me a way to endure. When my legs failed, my hands continued the work. And in every piece since then, I’ve seen that the same patience needed for stitching—one cross at a time—is the patience required for faith.