Woven Threads of Meaning

It was thirty-six years ago this week that my husband Lee and I had our first date. We met a few weeks earlier at a Labor Day picnic hosted by the president of the university we were attending in Alabama. We were both invited because all of the guests had some connection to Georgetown College in KY. 

As it turns out, Lee’s parents and my parents all attended Georgetown and were friends with our picnic host and president when he too was a college student there.

After further conversation, Lee and I learned that we were both born in KY and our fathers had also attended the same seminary and were both Baptist pastors. 

I remember noticing the synergy and uncanny connection of it all. As we got to know one another and dated several years, it seemed like all of the pieces of our story, past and present were fitting together to make a clear path forward into marriage. 

Fast forward to 2004. We had three young children and Lee was working a job he could do from any location. I had experience as a campus minister at several universities in Alabama and was beginning to look for work again after some time at home with the children. Strangely, Georgetown College called asking if I would be interested in interviewing for the position of campus minister. 

Because of the timing and the family connection to Georgetown College, I took the offer seriously and eventually made it through the interview process and was offered the job. 

Moving a young family far away from extended family and friends is not an easy choice, but the woven thread of meaning through our story as a couple was unmistakable. It was time to relocate to Georgetown, the place that had brought us together at the Labor Day picnic in 1988.

Researchers from Religious Education Research Centre in Wales asked adults about their childhood experiences of God and then placed their stories in categories. Woven threads of meaning was one of the groupings of recollections that helped children and adolescents notice and experience God along their journey.

In her book Faith Like a Child, Lacy Finn Borgo states, “The Spirit has been reaching for you since your beginning. You were born into the way of generosity but somewhere that memory may have been forgotten….the Holy Knitter wove those memories into your mind and heart and they can be found.” (p.41) 

I wonder what woven threads of meaning you recall from your younger years? How did you experience God in the fitting together of pieces that created a bigger picture of what to do and who to be? I hope you will share your story with a younger person to encourage them to notice the Spirit’s guidance along the way.

With Wonder,

Cynthia