Wiggle

A recent 'Upnorthica' post showed master craftsman, Mors Kochanski, making a hunting bow. It took him just a minute to craft the bow and attach the string to it.

It seemed the most time-consuming part of his art was prepping the tool for use. Mors explained the importance of repeatedly pulling the string away from the bow, creating tension, and bending the wood - then letting it return to shape again. The repetition of this pulling, this tension, makes the wood more flexible prior to use. If one were to place full tension on a bow that hadn't been stretched, the bow would snap.

I'll be honest... this wait for Eva has gotten tough again. Oh, I trust Him. I know He's good. But I feel stretched out over the span of 3 years. I feel the bending of internal fibers each time I enter her room without full assurance that she's ours. The pull of tension when my throat lumps up at the sight of a toddler - or even randomly at work. Often, I've questioned, "Why the repetition? Why are we at this same place again? And again?"

But this video was a tangible reminder... the Master Craftsman hasn't taken His tender, expert Hand off me. The stretching is uncomfortable - at times, it feels like more than I'm ready for. In my humanness, I tire of the back and forth, back and forth of brief movement vs. waiting. But there's purpose in it; He knows I'll need this flexibility later on. Isn't it true that the further the bow can flex, but still snap back to shape, the stronger a tool it becomes?

I like this concept; have been chewing on it from different angles. With life, it seems there's 'wiggle' in a lot of things - a back and forth motion that's part of learning to find our 'groove' - the flexibility it takes to grow up and stop insisting that everything is either good or bad, right or wrong, useful or wasteful. Don't get me wrong - SOME things are. Just not everything. That's the point.

Maybe we all learn to 'walk' with a bit more of a 'wiggle' as we get older...