They tell you to look ahead, to keep your eyes on the prize, to watch where you're going, to let the past go because it's done and can't be changed, while the future is ours to control. I don't know if I buy that. I don't think we can control our future any more than we can change what's past. Life is a whole cloth, the past, present, and future, stitched together; we make of it what we will. What patterns we make now are influenced by what we've sewn before. Our childhood stitches show us just how far we've come; we look back and see where experience has led us. We can spot our mistakes and with practice we learn how not to repeat them, and how to move forward to greater things. And when the time comes to lay down the quilt we've worked on for a lifetime, the beauty of the story remains, with all its imperfections, so that others can take it up and be warmed by the love woven into the cloth.
~Elise Skidmore ©2020
How beautiful. I love that poem.
Thank you so much, Rosemary! It means a great deal to hear you say that.