Row by Row

It all adds up to something

We did it! One year ago, my daughter and I began our temperature blanket: one colored row for each day of the year dependent on that day’s temperature. 366 days later on New Year’s Eve we finished it!¹

I won’t try to pretend this project was easy. The blanket that was meant to bring joyful mother-daughter bonding quickly became a burden everytime I looked at it sitting undone in my closet. Each missed day compounded, filling both my daughter and I with dread and discouragement. “We really need to catch up on that temperature blanket,” we quipped to each other all summer.

But one day in late October, I pulled it out and shoved the hook into the next row. Then I did it again. I sat for hours that weekend trying to catch us up. When my fingers grew too tired, I passed it off into my daughter’s fresh hands. After a week of work and some calculations, I realized our goal still lay within our grasp.

Throughout the final months of the year we crocheted—a lot. In the car, before bed, during our read-aloud with school. My favorite times were when I woke up early and crocheted a few rows in the quiet of the house: stitch after stitch after stitch. The threads of fiber soon weaved into the folds of blanket warming our legs beneath. Colors tumbled into each other line by line, showing the passing of the last year before our eyes.

We worked through the warmth of June as I hazily recalled the scrambled days of 4-H projects and a fun trip to the lake. We stitched through July, and my shivering body ached for its sunlight. My youngest cheered when we made it to his birthday in early August. “You did my row?” he exclaimed.

Then the rows became more painful in my hands. We crocheted the tiny band of turquoise that marked the day our family escaped from our van and watched it succumb to flames. We stitched through the waves of grief in the following days, and the grace from God that washed over us with each row after.

I find it interesting that the year we chose to weave into life was the year our family experienced such devastation. We didn’t plan to make a memorial of a difficult year, but in his sovereignty, the Lord gave us one more gift amidst the grief through the blanket draped across my daughter’s bed.

In that blanket, we see that August 14—a traumatic day for our family is one single row in a sea of others. I can’t actually tell you right now where it sits. Though it was an important shift for our family, it’s bound up to a host of other moments. In those bands of color we’re reminded life isn't only made from the biggest joys and losses, but of every day before and every day after.

Most of those days I can't remember. They were days of monotony that my brain has moved aside in its quest for efficiency. Days of waking up, emptying the dishwasher, going to work, then doing it all again. They’re the repetition of dinners, conversations, prayers, and sermons I can’t fully remember. Yet the fabric can’t exist without them. Each row established the faith, friendships, and bonds of our life. And they became the anchors we needed in the rows of struggle.

When we hold that blanket we hold the substance of a life: Boring days. Forgotten days. Traumatic Days. Grieving days. Mornings we woke up scared and evenings we felt safe. Afternoons we felt joy and nights we wept tears. Bound up amidst each other—one woven right into the next. Our family will be different because of that row, I have no doubt about it. But in many ways our days will also look the same: grief next to sorrow; hope next to despair.

Every morning you and I wake, and we add one more row to the blanket. We turn on the coffee pot. We drive to work. We make the same messes, and we clean them up again. We grieve, confess, weep for help, and extend mercy, once again. February 15. March 28. April 3. September 26. On some of those days we cry. On others we rejoice. The rows may speed by so quickly, but they are never lost. Each one loops into the other, and our Lord uses those days of seeming nothings just as much as the ones that feel like everything.

So go on, and add one more row. Wake up and do it all again.

Because he has promised us it will all be beautiful in the end.

1. 2024 was a leap year, so-one extra row! :)