The Middle

When it comes to your time with needle and thread, do you have a favourite part?

Does the excitement lie in the opening ‘chapters’ when you’ve chosen the ‘just right’ design, are sourcing the requirements and transferring the design onto fabric? Perhaps it lies in the middle where it’s just the push and pull of needle and thread through fabric as you lay each stitch? Or maybe you relish the laying of the final stitches?

Whilst we’ve heard from many of you that the opening chapters can often be the hardest to wade through as you’re eager to lose yourselves in the ‘actual’ stitching, we’ve also heard that once you’re there, you sometimes find yourself rushing towards the closing chapter as you aim to ‘finally’ lay the final stitch.

Life’s funny like that – we tend to love new beginnings, sometimes resent the long middles as we relish the excitement of completing what’s before us only to repeat that same cycle time and time again.

Unfortunately (and also beautifully), the middles are where most of our actual lives happen.

It was a piece written by Catherine Jackson that brought this idea front of mind for us.

Catherine wrote about her tendency to rush through the current season of life just to get to the next thing. She felt the middles were simply a transition from one thing to the next. Over time, however, she came to realise that as soon as she’d made her way through one middle another was upon her, and the security she was hoping to find at the end of the middle was all but fleeting as the next transition was already before her.

So, Catherine learned to appreciate the middle. After all, reaching our goals is all but a moment in time, whereas the long and sometimes tedious middle season is where the majority of our days are spent.

Catherine’s realisation helped us to find a new appreciation for the middle. Now, when we find ourselves rushing to complete what’s before us, we’ll remind ourselves that our lives are actually made of middles and we need to make these days – and the laying of stitch after stitch – count because that’s where our lives are made and our joy is found. Not in the excitement of a new beginning or the relishing of a task complete, but in the actual process of doing what’s before us.