Hurting Hearts, Mended Here

The quiet work of mending.

Friends and colorful humans,

This month’s I Draw Home is about quilts, childhood comfort, and the quiet ways our hearts are stitched back together. I painted a basket of mended hearts and two swallows pulling a quilt onto the line, and somewhere in the making of it, I realized I am still learning how to mend.

With love,

Marissa

A quilt. Two swallows. The art of gathering the pieces.

Hurting Hearts, Mended Here

When I was a little girl, our house held stacks of quilts. My mom was from Kentucky, where quilting was simply what you did. A quilting bee was not just a gathering. It was medicine. It was women sitting shoulder to shoulder, hands busy, stories weaving in and out of fabric like thread.

There was one quilt I loved more than the others. I would trace its patterns with my fingers, following the stitched lines as they circled tiny squares into endless loops. It was tactile and rhythmic, something my small heart could hold onto when feelings felt too large. At night I would tuck it tightly under my sides and beneath my feet, sealing myself in. Under that quilt, I felt mended. Like the Velveteen Rabbit when he was loved into realness. Like Corduroy after he found his missing button and a place to belong.

Now, at fifty, I still need mending.

Life has its storms. There are seasons that bruise and moments that split you open. But I have begun to notice how mending happens all around me in quiet ways. A robin singing on a spring morning. A wildflower bowing and rising in the wind. The steady hum of honeybees in a hive. A dog pressing a kiss into the palm of your hand. Even rain, falling after a hard sky, watering what looked dry beyond saving. The world sings back to me a healing song

Our hearts can hurt. They can crack, splinter, and shatter. And still, they can be stitched back together by people, by nature, by creatures, by love. The hurting does not mean we stop braving the world. It means we learn how to gather the pieces.

Perhaps that is part of our calling in this beautiful world God has put us on: to keep mending. To repair what we can. To value the earth, life, love, friendship, and the small creatures who sit beside us when we are tired. To hang the quilt on the line again and let it catch the light.

Hurting hearts, mended here.

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