Hobbies.

 Hobbies.

 

What do YOU do to entertain yourself? Once upon a time, reading was my mainstay. Sewing was something to enjoy, but it was also necessary—along with keeping up with the mending for my family. One of my cousins sewed, gardened (the flowering kind, not the eating kind), and painted different types of pictures. She is 90 now and still does these things with as much purpose as she ever did. My sister-in-law used to enjoy cooking, and she was an excellent cook. She could make a cake that was mighty fine, too. She started cooking almost as soon as she was big enough to get close to the stove! Her mom, my mother-in-law, wanted the meals on the table when they got home from the farm on the weekends. For that reason, it seems to me that just plain cooking to suit someone else might not be much of a hobby. Guess it is still different strokes for different folks.

 

My brother likes to mess around with wood. If he ever gets a bunch of Dremel tools and a router table with bits, we may never see the end of the sawdust out of NWArkansas. Lance used to build things with wood also. His stuff was useful and good to have around. The bench on my front porch, the little wooden table in the bathroom, the stepstool in the office—all of those came from the hands of the oldest son. He also built a nice wooden chair for outside, but it was heavily used and abused over the years, so it is no more. Hanan was good with wood. He was good at fencing (the kind to keep things in or out), he built decks, dog houses, and just about anything necessary to help keep things where they needed to be.

 

My daughter is just a very talented young woman. She can work on just about anything in the house from sink to stove. She recovers furniture, can bring the correct tool to just about any undertaking that Gary gets involved in, and she knows how to get parts for anything from lighting to sprinkler systems. Whereas, if my hands were strong enough, this old woman might be able to remove the garden hose off the front faucet! Honestly, can’t imagine anyone having any kind of plumbing as a hobby!!

 

Some of my friends and family crochet or knit, quilt, make weavings, or otherwise make garments from knitting thread. My daughter-in-law has a sewing machine with an embroider feature on it. She made initials on scarves for all the women on her Christmas list. Sharon Dickerson can take cloth cutouts and make bowls with them. And Cindy Jones has mending down to an art! She gave some sewing lessons to a young girl once when we were visiting. And then, she has other special skills that make me wonder how she manages to have enough time to do anything for herself. One of these days, she is going to have to show me how to dehydrate eggs in my little dehydrator.

 

Hobbies are not all just ways to keep ourselves busy. Know for a fact that Sharon shares her sewing skills as a way to provide warm hats and ear covers for the homeless. Cindy teaches food preservation and other needed skills for those who may need to depend solely on themselves someday. But mostly, we all have to have some kind of activity that relaxes and rests our minds. Maybe we just need the satisfaction of having pretty curtains to hang in the windows or a pretty quilt on the beds, but to some of us, these little mindless endeavors are ways to quiet our minds when something is bothering us. We children knew that Mother was upset and taking it out on her piano when she would wham out Amazing Grace as if she were angry. Kinda think she was, to tell the truth. But whatever our reasons, we all need something that does not require a lot of interactions with others, some steady repetition of stitches, or the unraveling of a good mystery with descriptions to carry the mind to a different place. God gave us a schedule of daylight and dark; he also told us to rest from our work at least once a week. And, Dear Hearts, as if you did not already know, he gave us reasons to slow down with the aging of our joints and muscles. We can choose less strenuous activities, less arduous thoughts connected to what is going on in the world, or even less troublesome approaches to the weather and wind around us.

 

Basically, we have choices to make each day, each season, and in each area of our lives. We can call them hobbies or whatever, but we need to relax at times and stop sweating the small stuff. And we also need to look at the major decisions that absolutely have to be made as if they, too, shall eventually just be more small stuff. Remember: will it matter tomorrow? Next month? Next year? Let God handle the big stuff and take time to rest your worries on His shoulders.

 

Rest well, my friends. You are loved.