It's a Singer, Tension-Free Day!

Today, August 12th, 1951, the Singer Sewing Machine was patented. Issac Singer, a mechanic, cabinet maker and actor, devised a sewing machine that used a shuttle moving in a straight path to sew. His patented design was made of cast iron, with a placed spool of thread on an adjustable arm and used a friction pad to control thread tension. Singer used his abilities to exhibit and sell his machine.

I’m sure this bit of trivia doesn’t alter your day, but it did mine. It reminded me of the phone call from my sis-in-law, Karen, last week, telling me that she bought Mom (who will be 98 in October) a small Singer sewing machine (pictured here). It seems Mom was wanting to do a little sewing – taking up some pajamas that were too long and a top that was too big. Mom had no problem with threading the machine and sewing the stitches. When Mom moved from her home to live with Karen and George, she gave her Singer-in-a-cabinet to her granddaughter. Who knew that she’d want to sew again? I love it so much that Mom is still so clear-minded and just won’t quit.

I have a portable Singer machine that I keep handy for quick sewing projects. When I started making face masks recently, I noticed the “tension” was off – the top stitch was way too loose. I mentioned above that Issac Singer added the friction pad to control thread tension. I simply rethreaded it and the tension was perfect. I started thinking about the friction and tension that we have been dealing with – not just over the coronavirus, but for years now, with politics and disagreements. Our country needs something to control all the friction and tension.

Another word for friction and tension is stress. People are really stressed out and for good reasons if we simply focused on the doom, gloom and despair. But I found a stress reliever in my friction pad that I land on daily. You see, God, our great innovator, knew that we would encounter plenty of reasons to “lose it” – to get our "threads" all tangled up, bunched up and even slow down the progress. What does He do to help us “control the tension”? As Christians, how should we handle stress, because we all know that anything that distracts us from our relationship with God are the things that derail our relationship with Him. Here are some of His built-in ways that I've come to rely on for tension-free living:

✝️ Worship: Focusing on THE ONE Who helps us control our “thread” tension. Worshipping He Who is always worthy of all our praise, brings peace and calm and balances us out.

🙏 Pray: Praying through stress keeps us focusing on the Lord. It re-routes our primary attention from earthly issues to our Heavenly Father's promises.

🙋‍♀️ Ask for help: That’s what friends are for – it may be time to ask for help from our family or friends. Even a simple prayer request over a text message keeps us plugged in to people who care about us.

👥 Seek Community: The Body of Christ is meant to strengthen each other when we’re weak, help us in times of need, support us during difficulties, and celebrates God’s faithfulness with us.

📜 Read & Memorize Scripture: This is my life-saver! God’s Word is a lamp to our feet and pathway and the provider of every answer we need to life's stressors. Meditating on the truth of Scripture surely brings light and life to us.

The more we practice the presence of Jesus through intentional thoughts on Him and His peace, helps us to recalibrate for tension-free living -- remembering all the while that we serve a mighty, all-powerful God Who reigns over all our lives and promises to work all things for the good of those who love Him.

The Power of Adversity

I’m taking a little “Nana” moment to celebrate my grandson’s winning 1st Place in his Original Oratory Speech at the NCFCA National Championships this weekend. Out of 1000s of students from 45 states, competing in 65 preliminary tournaments, 500 students made it to Nationals. Payton's win is truly a tribute to his diligence, hard work, and relentless attitude. The win comes with scholarships offered and afforded him the opportunity to deliver the speech after the competition to over 1,500 people. I was blessed to be able to watch it LIVE, thanks to technology! I am always a proud Nana of my grandchildren, and this just added another notch on my “pride and joy” belt. Beyond the pride, however, was the speech he gave that truly described his own story of overcoming adversity and helping others to realize that adversity can be a friend to those who recognize God’s way of building our character and our ability to overcome and come out as a conqueror.

“The Power of Adversity” was the topic of this speech. In it, Payton talked about the tension and adversity that we encounter and the more we experience, the better the trajectory of the potential of success in our future. He used the analogy of his Toys R Us bow and suction-cup arrow, as a child, which did well to kill his “refrigerator bad guy”, but it paled in comparison to the real bow and arrow that his dad bought him, set the tension to Payton’s ability and he soon learned this arrow could fly three times further because of that tension.

He went on to point out world changers and history makers like Thomas Edison whose teachers said he was too stupid to learn anything. And, Abraham Lincoln who failed in business, marriage, politics and suffered the loss of his two sons before becoming the President of the United States. Every adversity these leaders experienced increased their patience, their knowledge and their ability to create history. Payton quoted Walt Disney “All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me. You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.”

Payton went into his own story of adversity. In the same year: his Papa died from cancer, his dog died, and he was being bullied at school. He said, as he pointed out his thin body, “I’m not the most athletic kid but I sure wanted to play football and fit in with the other guys.” Instead of helping him, they bullied him and the abuse only got worse and the verbal hatred got louder. The words spoken over him replayed like a broken record in his mind – “too skinny, you’ll never amount to anything, you’ll never be good at anything”. With many hilarious, self-deprecating moments throughout his speech, his message was clear: "When adversity comes, like the storm that came up while Jesus was asleep in the back of the boat, let it be that storm that takes you to the other side”.

Payton’s speech resonated with me too. We all have defining moments that either make or break us. Whatever those moments are, God will use them for our good. Our destiny and purpose are wrapped up in each and every adversity that comes our way. It's that "stuff" that causes the aha moments -- those moments that seemed like the worst of worst times but were actually the turbo boost to propel us to where we were meant to be. The times of adversity either make us stronger and cause us to have the "warrior mentality" or we succumb to the pressure and throw in the towel and have the "pull-the-blanket-over-the-head mentality". One makes us stronger and leads to success and the other causes us to quit and leads to failure stories. They're either stories that said "I pushed through to victory" or "I gave up and quit. IF ONLY....I had persisted." From Abraham Lincoln to Thomas Edison to Payton Wallace, great leaders and achievers push themselves beyond the point of failure and take a step back to re-evaluate why they started the journey in the first place. Even when their body or mind told them to quit, they dug deep and pushed through the adversity.

My parting paragraph is Payton’s final words from his speech. I pray these words to speak to your heart:

“I don’t know what you’re going through today. Maybe you’re facing financial adversity, a broken relationship, or even if you’re just like me….you look in the mirror and you feel inferior and worthless. Jesus is in the back of the boat with you. He has a way of using every adversity and every difficulty to propel you to the other side of your breakthrough. Now, personally, I’ve grown to fight greater enemies than my refrigerator and I know that God uses every adversity in my life to prepare me and propel me to become a leader worth following. The same is true for each and every one of you. Adversity is not your enemy. Tension is not your foe. Instead, embrace it. Peace isn’t the absence of adversity. Peace is the confidence in knowing that all things – even the seemingly worst things -- work together for good when you put your faith and trust in God.”